For the Love of Learning

On Tuesday of this past week I presented a project I’d been working on for the past four months.

Since December of 2020, I’ve been researching the interaction of language and culture for New Zealand’s native people compared to Australia’s native people.

For about an hour a day, six days a week, for months, I’ve been reading about the way that people treat native languages and how these two countries use Indigenous languages.

I studied journal articles and analyzed impact reports and read books about language and people groups. I used up four highlighters and read through dozens of sources. My final paper rang in at 55 pages.

And you know something?

I loved pretty much every minute of it.

It was incredible.

I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Yes, I am well aware that I’m a nerd.

But here’s the thing. I think amidst the constant flow of papers and projects and exams and things we “have to do” in college, we lose sight of something really amazing.

We get to learn.

Currently, I’m sitting in a library with thousands upon thousands of books in it. Books with titles like Augustine through the Ages and Dolores Claiborne and Historical Dictionary of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy and The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Handbook of Industrial Engineering and The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

To be fair I don’t know who Wittgenstien is and I don’t really care about industrial engineering, but that doesn’t really matter. If I wanted to find out who Wittgenstien is, I could! If I learn about engineering, I could do that too! Those things don’t interest me, to be honest, but linguistics and people groups do. And I got to spend hours every week learning about that. Just because I wanted to.

College is great. Truly. I love my school and my professors. But we sit through a lot of lectures we don’t care about. We complete a lot of assignments that don’t really matter. We read a lot of books that don’t make much sense.

And sometimes we forget that we’re not here just so we can get a job and become adults.

We’re here to learn.

Let me be clear: I’m not condemning first-world students for not gleefully writing essays about how they will use the second law of thermodynamics in their futures. Nor am I encouraging everyone to go read every book in their library (unless you want to).

I’m just saying we’re here to learn. And not just because we have to but because we want to. Because there’s a little something in us that aches to know more. Something in us that wants to help people. To make a difference. We’re all chasing after this little spark that ignites in us, that gets our heart pumping and makes us raise our voice and talk too fast because we love it so much.

Too often we lose sight of that fire. We forget that in this life we get to explore and be courageous and ask questions. We forget that we get to learn. Not just learn boring stuff to pass History class. We get to learn about things we care about. Things that excite us.

I got to do that this semester. I got to learn just for the sake of learning. Just because I wanted to. And then, I got to share about what I’d learned.

Not because I had to.

Not for a grade.

Not to pass a class.

Just for the love of learning.

And let me tell you, it felt pretty daggone great.