Once again I find myself caring not at all for my schoolwork. What little promise my classes had at one point held now woefully evaporate at the feet of midterms and term papers. yet again my mind wanders and my enthusiasm wanes while my better judgement fights rapidly to keep my falling marks afloat and my academic aspirations from going asunder.

Meanwhile, dozing off in class, I ask myself questions far more important to the bigger picture than any study questions I will come across in my revisions. I am not satisfied with the ensuing silence. Who was it that decided students should not be trusted to actually want to learn unless tested and tried and laden with coursework? When was it decreed that to study a subject was to stamp out all passion for it? And when did the thirst for wisdom and perspective quash our curiosity into letting dust fill the pages of our libraries’ treasures?

When was it decreed that to study a subject was to stamp out all passion for it?

I ask in earnest. I ask where have the lost arts of tinkering and experimenting gone because I believe that the renaissance scholar spirit in all of us can be cultivated. I ask why we have no DaVinci or Tesla in our time when I should really ask why we’ve no mad father downstairs in his workshop who fancies himself a scientist. But I do not believe any of these men are gone forever — the great visionary and the local tinkerer alike — but under the right circumstances I believe the sun can reignite the inquisitorial spark, that flame that burns for the greater good that ended (seemingly) with the Industrial Revolution.

There are dangers of course — there are always dangers — but there is progress to be had too, and unity as well when minds are so befriended in the pursuit of parallel, if no common goals.

And again I return to asking. I ask why our delight with the miracles of the world and our incessant desires to understand its mysteries must die with our innocence in childhood? Why do we now base our judgements on slips of paper rather than our experiences, as if avoiding getting to know anyone well enough to tell if they are intelligent, or deep, or kind? Why can we no longer learn purely for the pursuit of knowledge, be taught for the sake of understanding life as a whole, not in parts?

Moreover, I ask these important and heavy-handed questions not because I mourn their loss, fear their death, but because in light of their dearth I wish to reawaken them to set in motion the cogs now rusted immobile by ages of convenience where we are spoonfed set tracks, predefined courses of action as easily as we subsist off of refined sugars and colours in the modern world.

I hold fast that we are not lost in an abyss, no, for we have all the tools at our disposal as the great alchemists and inventors did eras ago. As with every great leap of progress in human history — Renaissances, Enlightenments, and upheavals of every variety from Industrial to Philosophical — the beginning is marked by a bohemian-born revolution and the end by a period of tranquility. We are merely tranquil now. Tranquility is not the problem.

What appalls me at this moment is not mankind’s silence, but our unblinkingness. In fact, it does nothing short of astound me that so little of our schooling requires us to think, to question and work out for ourselves, to arrive at our own conclusions. Instead of being asked to think, we are merely told.We have more information and how-to at our disposal than ever yet are taking little interest in it than ever before as we are content to merely sit around existing.

Instead of being asked to THINK, we are merely TOLD.

But what to do? Surely I could debase the status quo by acting the contrary and urging others to do the same, yet I do not. I bide my time and shirk and procrastinate like the best of them. I take less joy in my studies than the average elementary child takes in nap time. So essentially I am a great hypocrite. Yet there is more to it, I urge myself. I am among the most curious of persons, and my list of activities to which I aspire is now so long I could wrap it round my length many times over. I thoroughly enjoy being learned, being stimulated by the new, so the fault must lie within the methods of my learnedness, methods which require discipline of willpower rather than discipline of mindpower. When was the last time my curiosity entered into it? Creativity? Play?

The methods of my learnedness require discipline of willpower rather than discipline of mindpower.

Mostly I am at a loss for patience because, try as I might within the prescribed channels, no one will teach me what I want to know, a fact which, to my great despair, is being proven and reproven to me the further along I delve into higher education. Do not misunderstand me, higher education is far from a worthless endeavour, but what I really want is an education dialogue that makes us think about the content rather than the wordcount or the grading rubric.

While some professors do strike impressively close to this notion, all that I have met fall short. It might be time to start my own school, if I am reading the signs properly, though no such endeavour can come to pass for me to enjoy at present, and it has long past been time for me to reprioritise my education which, unfortunately, may not lie within the aforementioned prescribed realms.

Am I too ambitious in my academic aims? Is it enough just to forego the well-laid track? Perhaps the answer is to require more of ourselves, not less. If I took all the time I spend on productivity, organsation, making lists, fretting, in short all the marks of a good student, and instead converted them into unencumbered doing I would have done more than half of my hefty list already. In short, Merlin Mann’s crisis is justified, and my challenges not to be unmet.

A productivity system, in my opinion, should not get in the way of doing, should take under three seconds to change/update/start/end/remind, should be omnipresent, and should help you to do rather than provide an alternative to doing. We are habits of distractions who put numerous obstacles in the way of pursuing what we really want to pursue. In other words, we are cowards in the face of happiness. It’s a sad, pathetic situation.

We do not have to remain victims of the inabilities of our teachers, the incompetence of our prescribed task lists, and the ignorance of our distracting habits.

But we do not have to remain tragedies, victims of the inabilities of our teachers, the incompetence of our prescribed task lists, and the ignorance of our distracting habits. I ask, again, what is important? That’s the question; I put so much in front of it. I mask it in digital distractions of RSS feeds and email, I block it with the outlines of fantasy and self-indulgence. I put off action and for what reason? It’s embarrassing how little it takes to keep me sleeping and unblinking, when it’s equally unmomentus to move me to change, to action. It is not the activities that content us but the pursuit of activities that make us content. Those pursuits never grow old. And I personally am utterly ashamed of how I’ve put it off, let my ambitions die.

I think change, constant change is key; keep things moving, shifting and you’ll not get too lost, you’ll not forget to keep pursuing, to surface everywhere and dabble in everything, to question. I may not be writing the next great American novel, but I am writing. And I may not be inventing the next revolutionary machine, but I am inventive. And I may not have the answers, but at least I am questioning, and that goes above and beyond anything academia’s asked of me. And that’s a start.