0018 Why You Should Learn More
The Brief
Welcome back Ladies and Gentlemen to the Architecture Student Diaries where it is my mission to help you kill it in Architecture school whilst making you, the best you in the process. From the day you are born, you are learning multiple things per day. In your first few years of life, you learn how to eat, walk, talk, make decisions and how to use a toilet. These are major milestones in a child’s development and after these, life lessons are far less celebrated, but this by no means alludes to them being less important. You continue to learn lessons and skills throughout the entirety of the rest of your life; as you grow older though, lessons learnt are typically from making bad decisions or from intentionally taking it upon yourself to learn more and expand your knowledge. This choice to broaden your understandings and abilities is something that you as a University student are already doing, and I commend you for this. Now that you have taken this first step in your adult education and know the direction in which you want to go professionally, it is time to work to learn as much as you can to assist you in this journey. In this class I will be discussing several reasons as to why pushing yourself to learn in adulthood is important.
Below is a breakdown of what we will discuss in today's lesson:
To Get Out of a Rut
To Cure Boredom
When There is Something You Don’t Know
It Is Interesting
To Be Interesting
To Be Successful
To Be the Best You
Now, let’s get into it. Class is now in session.
To Get Out of a Rut
Do you ever feel like you are stuck creatively? You can’t get started on a design or you just feel like you are repeatedly doing the same thing over and over again? Well, it is possible that you are in a rut. People can get stuck in creative ruts and also in general ruts of lifestyle; these can be distressing and cause people to rethink what they are doing and who they are. Being in a rut can be deeply rooted mentally in someone and in this case can require professional help to get out, though typically, making a few changes in your everyday activities can assist in pulling you out of this rut. Learning new skills and knowledge is one of the most effective ways to get out of a rut as you are not only undertaking practice and learning new skills, but you are also doing new things in the process. These new skills will now allow you to undertake activities that you were incapable of in the past thanks to your new found knowledge and abilities.
To Cure Boredom
Something that I have been told for my entire life is that the word ‘boredom’ doesn’t exist; but rather, if you are bored, you are simply choosing not to do something better with your time. Choosing to learn something new is the perfect thing to do when you are bored, the task of learning a new skill or piece of knowledge will utilise much of your brain power and therefore alleviate your boredom. So, if you find yourself searching for something to do or feeling like you are wasting away a day, find a book to read or head to a site like LinkedIn Learning and teach yourself something new!
When There is Something You Don’t Know
Probably the most obvious reason to learn a new skill is when you find yourself lacking knowledge in an area or unable to perform a certain activity. This is the perfect opportunity to begin to search for a mentor, tutor or even an audiobook to start teaching you this desired skill and put your mind to learning it. When I find something that I don’t know, I do not usually just say ‘oh well, I guess I will have to forget about it’, or ‘I’m going to have to pay someone to do this’, I begin to search for ways that I can learn to do it myself. Yes, there are obviously some circumstances when I am unable to learn things as they are either out of my possible abilities or that I simply do not have the time to devote to learning them; however, if this is not the case, I always do attempt to educate myself, and I encourage you to do the same.
It Is Interesting
Humans are an interesting species, always striving for expansion, excellence and the next big thing; all in our perpetual quest for knowledge. We are always looking for ways to better ourselves, our civilisations and our ways of life; for some this is a worldly quest, for others, purely selfish. Humans continue pushing the boundaries of knowledge not simply to make life more fun, but because it is interesting to unlock new abilities and see what we as a species are truly capable of. Albert Einstein, one of the most well-known scientific minds of all time spent the majority of his life working to discover the mysteries of the universe as part of the human quest for knowledge.
After publishing the theory of general relativity and becoming a worldwide phenomenon, Einstein moved onto spending the rest of his life searching for a way to prove his unified field theory. Although Einstein was never successful in finding this proof, he continued to work on it until the day he died due to his personal human quest for knowledge. Humans for centuries have spent time learning and searching for answers and new abilities purely because it is in our nature and we find it interesting. If you are looking for something new to learn and find Einstein and his work an interesting topic, I highly recommend that you read Walter Isaacson’s novel titled ‘Einstein His life and Universe’, it is a terrific and very informative read.
To Be Interesting
The more you learn, the more you know, this is pretty straight forward. The more things that you know and have stored in your brain means that you have more things that you can talk about and do with other people, therefore, you become an interesting person to spend time with. Have you ever been in a conversation with someone, and they just seem… let us say… uninformed? In these circumstances do you end up rolling your eyes and waiting for the conversation to end because you are getting bored? On the other hand, what happens if you are talking to someone who seems to be filled with knowledge and brings up interesting topics in conversation? Do you become bored, or do you become intrigued and committed to the conversation? Now, which one of these two types of people would you rather be? I assume you would rather be the interesting person. So, there you go, if you want to be an interesting and likable person, keep putting in the time to learn as much as you can.
To Be Successful
I know that these days you constantly hear about the extremely successful people who are lesser educated, who dropped out of school and became entrepreneurial marvels; but… just because these people are lesser educated, does not mean that they are lesser educated… Many of these people who ‘dropped out of school’, actually dropped out of extremely high profile university degrees of which they were only accepted into in the first place because they were already extremely intelligent, and did not need the qualification to do what they wanted to. If you were to talk to the world’s most successful people, you will find that most of them will tell you that one of the keys to success is to never let a day pass without learning something new. Another thing they will most likely say is that they read books every day to expand their knowledge.
Unfortunately for you, you are studying architecture and to become an architect you do need your degree, so you are going to have to stick out your course to the end unlike those who dropped out. This does not mean that your path for knowledge should be any different though as you should continue to pursue to learn each day if you want to become a successful individual. The more you learn and the more you strive, the closer you will become to being successful; this is no different in any profession.
To Be the Best You
This final point ties into everything above as the continued process of learning new information and skills throughout your life will work to better you as a person. Learning new things is interesting and is an excellent way to fill time, cure boredom, become more interesting and to become as successful as possible. Learning and educating yourself has always been and will always be the simplest and best option for bettering you as a person and as a professional and this is why I recommend you put your time into learning as much as you can.
Final Notes
I hope that I have provided you with lots of reasons to go out and start learning as much as you can in this class, as it is one of the most important things you can do in life. We as humans will never accept that where we are now is the optimal place for us as a race, and the state of our current environmental troubles prove this. We as humans must move forward to learn as much as we can to ensure that we can provide a better life for the future and ensure our planets longevity. Keep learning, keep practicing your skills and keep pushing to be the best you that you can be, because each of us are capable of great things if we apply ourselves.
Ladies and Gentlemen, class dismissed.
Iain Colliver, SONA, YBA, GKIHS
