I loved school as a child, I really did.

I used to be a top student, I was the kind of student that everyone wanted to sit next to when having an exam. In class, the teachers constantly told me to shut up and give some room for others to answer the questions.

But I didn’t accept that and always had a fire in my eyes, I was really passionate about what they taught me and I wanted to express myself. I liked to wake up every day and having to go to school.

Now, as I’ve grown up, I hate and despise schools.

I’ve literally developed a hatred for the educational system to a point that I feel betrayed by them.

Why my feelings have changed so dramatically? You wonder.

The real reason I hate schools today is that I came to a realization that school was a waste of time for me.

The educational system took my best years, in terms of ability to learn quickly, and instead of feeding me with practical, useful knowledge they fed me with useless crap.

Your brain has a limited capacity, you must use it intelligently.

When I was 16, I didn’t suspect it might be a waste of time, I simply absorbed the material and thought it will contribute to my future plans, which was to be a scientist back then as a child. Yet they never taught me anything about critical thinking, or how to be an auto-didact, for example, which is very necessary for being a successful scientist.

Having said that, one of the most important things the education system fail to learn us when we’re young is communication skills.

Communication skills are so essential and valuable, regardless of which path you’re going to pursue in life. And yet, I’ve never been taught in school how to interpret body language, or how to be a better listener.

So I’ve reluctantly learned through experience, the hard way. I was a really bad communicator and suffered a lot from conversations that lead to nowhere. People rolled their eyes at me, and I barely understood what was wrong. Maybe sometimes it was them, but most of the time, it was my own poor listening skills.

When you want to build your character – always assume the problem you are facing has something to do with YOU.

Otherwise, you’ll always find yourself complaining, which of course is never a good idea.

One of the worst habits I had was to always talk talk talk, without letting the other person express his ideas.

I think it had to do a lot with my tendency to see myself as the smartest person in the room. I truly thought I was, so I always tried to express what I thought they thought in my own specific words.

Very bad thing.

And it drove them crazy. Well, I understand them. There’s nothing worse than a person who thinks he knows everything better. Let alone that people will never listen to you if you’re so full of yourself, without letting them express themselves uninterruptedly.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of education and learning. I just don’t feel like schools give us actionable knowledge. Theories are important, of course, to expand the mind and be knowledgeable.

However, when unbalanced, and you learn just theories all the time, you end up knowing nothing real, but only on a conceptual level. You can’t convert the knowledge to real-life actions, so it remains in your head for years until you forget it.

So, what’s the point?

Knowledge is awesome, but without action it’s meaningless.

Today, I truly feel that my character is based purely and utterly on real-life experiences. None of my best traits based on hours of class. Schools literally took my best years of learning, when I was at my peak of my fluid-intelligence, and gave me nothing valuable in return!

Which makes me wonder:

Did I really benefit from the educational system? Or it was a total waste of time?

A part of me wants to say yes, it’s a waste of time! I didn’t achieve long-term actionable knowledge from class. I forgot nearly everything I learned there.

But the truth is: I’ll never know.

After all, I love who I am today, so I can’t blame the circumstances of my life for bringing me to a point of self-fulfillment. Nevertheless, I will always wonder what would have happened If I wasn’t into school. I will never know if it was a good or a bad thing.

There are things we simply can’t measure, and from every experience in life, we can learn a lot, even if we think we can’t.

So… Is school a waste of time or not?

Well, unfortunately, my unsatisfying answer for you is:

We’ll (probably) never know.

~

Until next time,

Gal.