From boredom to fascination: my journey with education

Modern schooling actively harmed me, only once free of that prison did anything important begin

Nineteenth-century artistic rendering of the Library of Alexandria

I absolutely loathed school and university as a youth, it was a time I was never more bored or nihilistic in my life. I did enough to pass because it wasn't that hard, but the process felt fake, like a walled garden with results and product that had no impact on the real world. I slogged through lectures, crammed for exams, and tore through writing papers just to get by. My relationship with education was one of sheer survival, not passion or curiosity. I learned more important skills playing computer games and posting to forums online, unironically.

Yet, here I am as an adult, watching lectures and listening to multi-hour long podcasts from top thinkers for fun, voluntarily on weekends. How did this transformation happen? How did someone who found the classroom to be a prison come to find joy in the very thing they once despised?

My early experience with education was not uncommon. Many students feel trapped in a system that is far more concerned with grades and standardized tests than true learning. As Albert Einstein once said, "education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school." For me, this couldn't have been more accurate. The facts and figures I memorized ended up being fairly irrelevant (I could simply Google them, after all) and the rote learning methods stifled my creativity and enthusiasm. A good example here is after university I composed several albums of original music. But at no point in the educational process did anyone instill that in me, I was in band but disliked playing other artist’s works. Composition wasn’t really an option, and that’s what I wanted to do, I just needed some freedom to be able to do it.

Philosophers throughout history have mixed feelings about formal education. Socrates, for instance, valued the pursuit of knowledge through questioning and dialogue over traditional schooling. He believed that education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel. My own schooling felt like the latter, a process of being filled up with information without doing much to get me excited for life.

So, what changed? The transition from enduring education to embracing it was gradual and somewhat accidental. I lucked into reading psychology, philosophy and science literature (initially by way of business reading, that mentors I respected recommended). At the same time I started writing longform ideas online in 2008, an incredibly useful metacognitive exercise.

John Dewey, a prominent educational reformer, believed that education should be about engaging with the world, fostering curiosity, and encouraging critical thinking. He’s the one who said the line you probably know: education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. It makes sense, and unfortunately for me university was 4 years of ultimately pointless classes (but probably important socialization, so there’s that).

The main differences between my childhood education and current learning experience is the freedom I have: in school, the curriculum was rigid, and my interests sidelined. Now, I choose what to learn, dive into topics that fascinate me, and skip over those that don't.

This autonomy has been liberating. Michel de Montaigne, a Renaissance philosopher, wrote about the importance of a personalized education. He believed that the greatest and most important difficulty in human knowledge is the education of children. His essays suggest that education should cater to the individual, allowing for personal interests and natural curiosity to guide learning. As an adult learner, I have the luxury of following this ideal, exploring diverse subjects at my own pace. Why we don’t give this to kids made sense for awhile: we were training them for factory work. But the factory has been gone a long time.

Technology also played a significant role in my transformation and I’m certain I’m not alone here. The availability of online courses, podcasts, lectures, and educational resources has democratized learning, making it accessible to anyone with an internet connection. The digital age has broken down the barriers that once confined education to the classroom. When I was at Google, we believed in self-directed learning and even built an analytics MOOC (free, open to all) which trained millions in basic data literacy, with self-paced content that was relevant and immediately valuable. The course ratings were very high, an indicator to me people thirst for continued, non-traditional education.

My path from hating school to loving learning is a testament to the idea that education is not confined to our youth, and also neither is health. I am in better shape physically and mentally now, probably having to undo much of what was forced upon me. If you had told 16 year old me I’d be writing essays on the Roman Empire or Schopenhauer in my free time, I wouldn’t have believed you.

Education, in its truest form, is not about grades or degrees or submission to schedules and arbitrary demands. It is about the joy of discovery, the thrill of understanding something new, and the continuous quest for knowledge. A classroom was just never going to do that for me. We currently live in a dystopian age where parents give their kids war-time grade stimulants to try to brute force them through these broken, dated systems. No wonder so many are unhappy and unfulfilled.

For those who find themselves disenchanted with education because of your youth: remember that learning is a journey, one that can take unexpected and delightful turns at any stage of life. Infinitely more fulfilling than hours torched doomscrolling on your mobile device. I don’t know how to fix the education system for people like me, but do know it’s a choice to remain stuck because of it.