Learning should not be categorized with exams and essays, but rather with living and experiencing.
Since I was roughly six years old, I have always had a passion for learning. Though the thought of the education system was not always a concept I appreciated, I always enjoyed grasping new information.
It all started when my mother bought me my first book, Madeline. It was the story of a young girl in Paris, living in an orphanage, who has to have her appendix taken out (I know, how kid friendly). My mother tells this story better than I, but here is what happened one night: she came into my room because she heard me “reading” the book all by myself. When she got closer, she could see that the book was upside down, and that I had correctly memorized the entire forty-four page book. The rest is history.
All was great on the learning train, until I reached high school. I was no longer interested in what I was learning. The generic subjects of Biology and Calculus did not appeal to me. So I did what any normal sixteen-year-old would do: I stopped caring. Now before you lose faith in me as a student, I need to tell you that I did not stop walking on a path to success, I just found an alternative route compared to the other students of Lawrence High School. I found an outlet: Media and Journalism.
I was asked to be the sports media coordinator for my high school, and it was from there that I took a video camera, a microphone and videotaped myself interviewing students, players, family and friends in the community about the school’s athletics. I learned to useiMovie and eventually Final Cut Pro. I recognized good shots vs. bad shots, the over-the-shoulder shot compared to a pan, and through this experience decided I had a passion for all things technology and media, and that would be what I pursue as I further my education.
When I began my undergraduate studies, I was able to jump right into my major and minor. Since day 1, I have indulged in film, television, music, the Internet and more. (Ironically without a television in my room. But hey, that’s the beauty of technological and media convergence!) There is something beautiful about learning why Hitchcock felt the need to be extremely meticulous, or why Godard believed in discontinuity, and why Scorsese was so fascinated with it. There is something amazing about being able to understand the difference between a corporation making a profit on a culture, and a culture having an impact on a corporation. To believe that the media does not affect the culture is nonsense, and to believe that the culture does not influence the media is just rubbish.
So this is what I believe: one will only indulge in information and retain it if they are interested in experiencing it. There is a difference between sitting and learning about how the human body works and being able to study an actual body and understand how it functions. For me, this path leads me to media. I do not just watch films, television, and advertisements, I read them. As a sucker for a good novel, I read all forms of media the same. It is my experiences that help me develop my opinions about each form I study, as is the same for everyone. Without experiences, we cannot retain information, we cannot enjoy it.
So my advice for learning? Find something you love, and I mean love. Do not study for the money, do not study for the security, study for the passion. Experience it. Take yourself back to the time of the film, to the location of the show, to the studio of the photo shoot. Put yourselves in the places of the professionals – whether it be a young man in black face during the Jazz Era, or a woman in the era of anorexia. Without learning, there would be no difference in thought. Without difference in thought, there would be no culture.