"Reflections on Education"

The Drive

I started writing this paper at 4:30 AM. It was not some crazy carpe diem mentality of waking up early that led me to start it, but rather as a break from more taxing studies during a sleepless night at the library. It was incompletion, procrastination that led me there, but there was something absolutely unstressful, even relaxing about admitting that the tasks I had left to do would come at the sacrifice of any semblance of sleep. Hours crept by as things better to have already been done slowly came into completion. Equations were solved, arguments were made, all without resting, but all with a strange feeling of machine-like restfulness. Unrushed and with a steady mind I peered into studies and let them reflect back into me.

Time in continuation, from one to two, two to three, three to four, created a sense of timelessness. As if the constant was me, a doer, and it was within the nature of my tasks to be done. Time, limited as it was, seemed to be the paintbrush, as if in limiting it gave definition not just to the external world but to the internal thoughts, the drive of reason. I surrendered to time, let it do its work. No equation seemed too difficult to solve, no argument too much to work through. Time led me, guided my reasoning, my writing, my art. Time was on my side. 

I was alone, but I was not lonely. Those tasks previously brushed aside seemed to accompany me. There was a necessity to their completion that was greater than a grade to be achieved. Simply put, it felt unnatural to not understand them completely, to not map out my reason with words on paper. I wrote what I understood, and the writing seemed to help me understand. It was in expending myself that I built myself up. 

Since the beginning of high school I have always realized that education gives you what you put in. The more you guide your mind toward education, the more education guides your mind toward knowledge. But more recently, I have separated focusing on education from focusing on doing more things. Now, I am driven not by achievement, but by understanding, and as such I am driven by the idea of thoroughness. 

Some people ask me whether math actually exists naturally, or if it is really only a human creation. The fact is, I do not care. The question does not matter, because whether it is a naturally human concept or naturally within external nature does not pertain to why I study it. Math instead offers a sense of understanding which is finite, an understanding in virtue of what is needed. A guided study in math is really a gradually expanding study of what is thorough enough to be considered knowledge. Thus, at every stage of understanding, math offers gratification. Furthermore, as difficulty increases, so too does the gratification of the task, a gratification that only comes with understanding, with certainty, and eventually with knowledge. Math is a study of how we know what we know, or sometimes whether we know what we know. As such, knowledge in math is of intense draw, and while within the moment math may be undesirable, over time it is fulfilling. 

Learning To Make Food 

I couldn’t call this section “learning to bake” or “learning to cook,” because invariably others question whether I bake or cook, when in fact I do both. The separation of the two is something that I find disappointing. Just last week at a job interview, the interviewer commented that he likes to cook because in cooking one can simply throw things into a pot, whereas in baking precision and science are involved. As someone who has spent copious amounts of time cooking, baking, and reading about the two, I must say that I disagree. Rather than one being  creative and the other being scientific, they both have always seemed to me to inherently possess the creative and scientific sides.

One could really ask whether science is truly opposed to creativity in the first place! In fact, it seems to me that there must be some true methodology, some science to most art. If in doubt, all one has to do is attend the local elementary school band concert to learn that some sounds within the category of art are simply less pleasing, less thoroughly developed, less fulfilling. Should art be something developed, pleasing, or fulfilling? If not, should it at least be  purposefully unfulfilling, underdeveloped, or displeasing? If any of those are true, there being methodology to art seems apparent to me. 

But that is a topic for another time, because this section was meant to focus on learning how to cook, or rather how to make food. I don’t know why I felt that desire in the fifth grade to make fettuccine alfredo, but either way I set out to do it, and was successful. After that I thought “why not make a pie?,” and thus from the start I was both cooking and baking, but strictly following a recipe in both cases. In similar fashion I was soon cooking weekly, making pies, cakes, pastas, and many other dishes. Then, perhaps around 8th grade, finding myself bored, I started simply reading cookbooks, learning how different ingredients and techniques are used both in a scientific sense and a cultural sense. And then, a transition seemed to occur. 

I was no longer following the recipes exactly, because now I could adjust each detail to  fit exactly what I wanted. Now I could craft subtle nuances of flavor and texture, simple nods to culture, balances achieved through understanding. As I progressed through high school, meals became paintings, desserts became songs. Science and tradition defined both of them, but science combined with a direction started to achieve the status of art. It seems to me that in my studies now I can hope for the same, that should I learn the principles, the methodology, the order behind the world and people that I see in philosophy and math, some form of art can proceed, thorough, developed, and purposeful.