On the first day of eighth-grade English class, my teacher — Ms. Freebody — informed the class that we would be responding to a quote for our first essay. Our responses were to be completed for Friday, leaving me with a mere two days to complete it. My peers and I were anything but pleased. She ignored our smug looks, turned her back to us, and proceeded to write the following B.F. Skinner quotation on the board: “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”
It would be years before I appreciated the art of writing, so the writing task hung heavily over my shoulders until Thursday evening came around. If I remember correctly, I wrote about the moral lessons found within novels that have stayed with me, even after the characters and plot fade away. It was a good paper for an eighth grader (at least I choose to remember it this way).
As each academic year comes to a close, I am always reminded of this assignment. What have I learned? What has stuck? This year exposed me to intricacies of the nephron, fluorescence resonance energy transfer assays, steady-state equilibrium, indifference curves, and coordination chemistry. I have a better understanding of what taking the symbolic interactionist perspective means and can now recognize the systemic flaws that exist within the scientific community. Each course has made its offering, and I have tried my best to steal those precious bits of knowledge that lie like low-hanging fruit.
It is inevitable that we will lose some of the cargo as the brain reaches its carrying capacity. I would be lying if I told you I remember the exact method of solving an ordinary differential equation, and I would most certainly give you a blank stare if you asked me to recite the reagents necessary for Friedel-Crafts acylation. For me, and maybe for some of you, “I don’t remember” feels like a failure, or even worse, a flaw in my own intellectual ability. I want so desperately to know everything and anything, but I just don’t have the storage.
To be fair, so many of our efforts are aimed at staying afloat by studying for exams. The time to listen, absorb, and play around with theory is basically non-existent, especially at a school where the norm is to squeeze six courses (some with labs) into a 14-week semester. I have concluded that “full understanding” is that pleasant point we reach when we feel confident for the exam; by no means does it imply that we have mastery of the subject. The testing culture is my one qualm about the college experience, but I do not foresee our academic administrators abolishing examinations in the near future. We learn for the test, pray for a good outcome, and forge ahead, oftentimes leaving course material behind so that we free ourselves of unnecessary baggage.
The intricacies and particulars of our coursework are transient, but what is important is the strong foundation in science I now have from Stevens. A bank of semi-attached memorized facts might be advantageous on Jeopardy or HQ, but life after college is not a game. The education I leave with goes beyond curriculum: it is a mental fortitude to be critical, analytical, and confident as problems arise. Recognizing a way to arrive at an answer will always trump having the answer on stand-by. It might have taken a lot of learning and much forgetting to appreciate this truth, but it is an indelible lesson that I will bring with me everywhere I go.
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