Knowledge is Power
I miss school like a heartache.
I started Second City classes a week ago and I was assigned homework. Granted, it was fun homework (Watch Late Night television, write jokes), but it was still homework. And, as I struggled with why Diet Pepsi, with added ingredients to increase shelf life, deserves the time slot after Larry King, I remembered what it was like to have to do something because a professor told you to.
I love school. I love education. Learning new things energizes me. I can only compare it to the feeling when you finish writing a book. I want to run around and strike ballet poses while expressing my joy to inanimate objects. Leap through doorways. Dance with a mop. Just remember that moment when, after struggling over something for hours, your brain finally makes that last connection and it’s like a whole new world is illuminated.
And, it doesn’t matter the topic. Granted, I struggle more with certain subjects, but learning is fascinating. Perhaps I’m intrigued by the impetus of learning that school forces on me. Learn or fail. There’s no other option.
I love homework.
I love hauling out that ten pound textbook and pulling out the highlighter. Poring over that dense writing with no white space. Maybe a diagram every twenty pages…
My roommate, Randy, has gone back to school to become a nurse. Which makes me question whether or not I need to have a direction in mind. What are things that I would like to learn?
I never really met my science needs. I haven’t taken a serious science course since freshman year of college and, face it, rocks aren’t the most difficult of sciences. 
Physics is an option. But, I never took to calculus. I need a refresher in that. I could always try to finish out my psych major. In college, I pretended that I didn’t want to conduct social experiments, but I totally do. Human behavior is quite interesting (or maybe I’m just annoyed by all the political posts on my Facebook feed).
Then, there are the humanities. A history course wouldn’t really aim me toward anything except to be more educated in history. But, there is the draw of just taking classes.
On a whole different level, perhaps education is my calling. Not necessarily the perpetual student on the level of Buster Bluth, but maybe my destiny is in education. Could I cut it as an associate professor somewhere?
I’m not about to abandon my dream of writing for television yet. All writers are captivated by knowledge. They’re seekers of truth, after all. This doesn’t change the fact that I really want to go listen to a professor.
If you could go back to school, what classes would you take? Answer in the comments to make me feel happy.
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TOTALLY, madam, TOTALLY. If I won $100,000 tomorrow, I’d catch up on bills, sock away some hefty savings, and put the rest towards a degree in linguistics from UNT. It’s like psychology for an entire culture, and it is *astounding* to learn how many different ways we-as-a-species have of organizing and interpreting the world.
But going back to your textbook-fetish, I am right there with you. I think one of the reasons that school is so intoxicating for some of us is because it is structured as all get-out. There is no ambiguity about whether you’ll make partner or how come the interviewer isn’t calling you back or what you have to do to get invited to the boss’s cocktail hour. “Just do everything on this list,” school says, “and all will be well.”
Real life definitely needs a syllabus.