autodidactic

i'm wasting my time in school.

in fact, i've wasted much of my life trying to learn inside the classroom. my real education, however, happened beyond the course curriculum. i breezed through grade school, high school, college, and graduate school in the hope of getting a good education. Admittedly, I didn't learn anything worthwhile. In fact, I always read the books that weren't required for class. I enjoyed and devoured them more than I did the handouts and textbooks that I was required to study. Consequently, I was not successful in school. I was a failure.

But I never allowed my schooling to interfere with my education. I have learned many things on my own. I have picked up new skills by self-study. The world of books has been my university. With the internet, learning has been made even easier and faster.

I continued to learn even when formal schooling took up much of my time. Even though I have been given the privilege of a good schooling, it only stifled my love for learning.

for all its merits, formal education has a way of making you feel bad about yourself. you get graded and you lose your interest in learning for learning's sake. you study to get a good grade, instead. you fret about how your future will be ruined when you don't get that BS, MA, or PhD.

life often has a sense of irony. sometime ago, i became a teacher. on many occassions, i had students who felt bad about themselves because they didn't make the grade. I pitied them but the educational system has its rules and you have to play by the rules. the sadder thing was, I upheld and implemented the very system i was against.