ANDY YE

I have been robbing the world of it’s color. I have searched for shapes, rather than things. And I have put knowledge on a pedestal, and learning in a corner.

Or at least, the idea of knowledge. I was placed into a math class 3 grades ahead of me in 5th grade. How did this happen? I was put in a library by my parents, where I would alternate between SSAT cram sessions and looking up cool lego builds. What did this mean for me? One might take it as a blessing, a way to learn more interesting things. It would’ve acted this way if I was truly interested in the material, but it was a means to an end. I just wanted to look at more cool lego builds!

In school, I did not care about Algebra 1 – or school in general – so my grades were dotted with B’s and C’s. I was one of the few kids in my grade in this level, sharing a room with higher grade students. So I felt like I was good at math. And everyone around me told me I was good at math, and smart, because I had tested into a higher math level. To me this was enough. I got poor grades, but it was okay because I was in a “higher level of math”. By placing high on the test, I was complacent from the start.

Of course, if I were placed in the regular math level I would think different thoughts in the same direction; “Oh, it’s okay that I’m here and just learning slowly because everyone else my age is at this level.”

Eventually, in 8th grade, I was told by my parents about the importance of colleges (honestly I was told my whole life but middle school didn’t count but it ramped up in high school), and I had to maintain the bare minimum of grades my parents deemed acceptable. But I never learned. I had never learned, so to me the concept of learning was alien to me; it was what I had been doing before, just cruising along and figuring out the formulas. I was just guessing the teacher’s password, and so I kept doing it. I would study the week before the test on the material that I hadn’t really learned, and perfect my notes sheet. I would study using the study guides relentlessly, because that was the most efficient way to know what was going to be on the test. I was gaming the system.

Even when SAT prep rolled around, I would find meticulous ways to cheat – I would google for the answers, even though it was from some Chinese-translated archive, and prune the internet until I found the answer key. I would rejoice if I found it quickly, and deliberately answer poorly on some questions so it looked believable.

I am not saying the school system is something benevolent, or studying/doing the SAT normally is really beneficial. I am saying that our school system rewards knowledge, not learning, that it idolizes trackable statistics. I know this is not a new idea, but it is really important to realize – at least for myself. And even if some classes are like “oh, you can make mistakes,” those are usually seen as just free classes where you don’t have to do anything, because the rest of the classes and past classes you’ve taken clearly speak otherwise.

I continue to do this in college. I have not learned anything, except in the realm of psychology through conversations with my friend. I think I need to reset, really start from the bottom of learning. I need to learn to learn. How do I learn? How do we all learn? I’ve felt it, with writing, with psychology. But I need to generalize this. I cannot be satisfied with my image, and use it as an excuse to not do anything. I am not “good enough.” I must be more, there is no good enough. I must learn.