I take a break from finals to bring you my thoughts on... learning.

So I was one of the kids in high school that took the AP classes and generally considered getting good grades was one of the most important thing in life. Now, it’s certainly important, especially if you want to go to a big university and you want to, like, build structurally sound objects and not have them collapse on people, then yes. You should master calculus so that I don’t die while I’m driving over a river.

But my point is that grades are not, in fact the most important thing in the world, (I write as I am supposed to be studying for my American history exam). I am a competitive person, which meant that I wanted better grades than everyone around me when I was in high school. I didn’t get them, because other people would actually study while I crammed for ten minutes before the exam and get a 90 rather than studying for five hours and getting a 95. Such is life.

So, in high school, good grades were the objective. Which meant that everything I did was in pursuit of that goal, and there were very few classes that I actually enjoyed and learned in. Because this is a universal truth about smart slackers in high school- you may get good grades, but that doesn’t mean that you actually learned anything. Last minute cramming ensures you an A, but that means that now, three years later, the only thing I remember about biology is that the ribosomes produce proteins and there’s a mitochondria in there somewhere but I don’t actually know what it does. 

Freshman year of college was a wake-up call for me. I could study for ten hours for a physical science exam and still get a 68 on it. Until that point in my life anything less than an 80% in a class was equal to failing in my book. I didn’t understand anything that these people were talking about. (How do electrons work as particles and a wave? That makes no sense!) And to be completely honest, when I was taking physical science, the only reason I understood Einstein's theory of relativity was because of Orson Scott Card’s book series of Ender’s Game. As I went through my general ed courses last semester- mainly the science ones- and consistently bombed those tests I started to care less about grades.

That same year I read a Shakespeare play in a weekend just to prove that I could, which was a big deal to me because I kind of hated Shakespeare. I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) for the first time and watched as my novel fell apart into a plotless puddle. I read a lot of books for fun. I decided to take a class on England History because I like England and I like history, it was my favorite class that semester. I decided that while I needed to pass my science classes I didn’t necessarily need to get A’s. 

(Okay, back from my American History final.)

This year I procrastinate studying by attempting NaNoWriMo again, meeting nerdy people, and watching educational YouTube videos. (The field for educational and entertaining YouTube videos is widening every year. Check out pbsideachannel, scishow and crashcourse if you’re interested.) This means that while I may not be learning about comparative politics I am learning about the Mongols, quarks and can you argue that Doctor Who is actually a religion?

The point that I’m trying to make here is that the more that I go through college, and the more that I learn about life and the world in general, is that I like learning for the sake of learning. Getting good grades is nice, but I find that enjoying the subject matter that is being taught to me is infinitely more important, because then I will go and seek out more knowledge in that field. I loved my American history and government class in high school, and that’s the reason that I’m now a history major and a political science minor. One day I will go back and read books like To Kill a Mockingbird so that I can enjoy it without the endless and pointless repetitive study guides. Because school is great, but it also ruined a lot of subjects for me. I think it did the same to a lot of other people too, and I find that that’s really sad. Because a lot of people won’t understand why learning is actually fun. The world is an interesting place, and I’m learning more about it every day.

Compliments

So today, or I guess now it was yesterday, my creative writing teacher complimented me on my passion. I had gotten slightly defensive of a poem we were discussing, which was rare. Because I hardly ever talk in that class. (I say slightly defensive, but when other people tried to add their comments before I was done, I just talked louder, and spoke faster. So really I was just plain defensive.)

Anyway, when he complimented me, I blushed. And it was a blush that could be felt deep, if you had cut open my bones to look at the marrow there, I’m sure that it would have been deep-blush-red. And I got to thinking when the last time I was really complimented. 

About a week ago I was having a rough day, so I went on a walk, which generally always helps. What was weird about this walk, was that as I was going through the dorm building I got complimented several times on my outfit. They liked my shoes, my jacket, my shirt. And I returned from my walk not feeling much better than before, but at least less likely to explode into a million pieces. 

But as I walked home from creative writing today I couldn’t keep the huge idiotic grin off my face and I skipped through the slow songs on my iPod and had a little spring in my step.

In John Green’s video, ‘Gay is not an Insult,” Link below, he says something interesting. (For nerdfighters: I really wanted to say in the doobliedoo, but there is no doobliedoo here on my blog so I couldn’t. And then I wanted to say, ‘In my pants’ but then my mother and possibly my grandmother read this blog, so I put it into parentheses instead as if that would make it somehow better to act like a twelve year old boy in parentheses rather than outside of them.) He says that you do not get insulted for what you do, you get insulted for who you are.

Which is really really interesting. Because compliments work the other way around. You do not get complimented for who you are. You get complimented for what you do or what you wear. Yes, thank you, it makes me feel better about my day when you say you like my skirt. But it makes me feel much better if you thank me for constantly being a good listener. 

Here’s the thing. People do things all around you. All the time. And you can compliment them on it, there is nothing wrong with that, it’s good. But the things that they are doing is indicative of who they are. And it makes them feel even better if you compliment them on who they are.  Because it lets them know that you care enough to notice that, and it makes them want to do it more.
   It's like the difference between me going up to one of my roommates and saying, "Thank you for doing my dishes," and "Thank you for noticing that I had a bad day and helping me by doing the dishes. It really helps to know that you care."*

Gay is not an Insult. (basically John Green bashing the grammatically incorrect insults of youtube.) Which, you know, is awesome. 
*It's easiest to do the second in note form. Generally as a human species we find it difficult to say things to each other's faces. It's a common attribute, and evolution has done little to take notice of it so far.