I was fortunate enough throughout my K-12 schooling to be very gifted within my classes and to always have the opportunity to try to understand concepts, rather than just guess passwords. However, I’ve become increasingly disenchanted with being stuck in a system that rewards things like password guessing. I’ve found a huge problem at my own university to be the related “password list rote memorization.” The examination system very strongly rewards remembering things only for 4-ish weeks at a time (the approximate length of time between exams) and then immediately forgetting them. It’s incredibly frustrating and it feels like my courses are wasting years of my life completely unnecessarily. I attempt to cram as much knowledge into my head as I can in a time period that’s too short for me to retain anything, achieve the reward of the exam grade, and then forget the material and never look at it again.
Eliezer’s articles have been some of the most thought-provoking pieces I’ve ever read, and they challenge me to actually figure out ways to use my learning to improve my life and create changes in my environment, rather than just getting gold stars on arbitrary goals, like exams, that are artificially created by someone else, but aren’t practically benefiting anyone. But as someone finishing undergrad soon, I’m at a loss as to how I might move forward without spending most of my time playing more password games (i.e. going to grad school).
Does anyone have any suggestions for alternative things I might devote myself to? I actually do have an uncommonly good memory when I can learn things properly the first time, and with strategically spaced repetitions I can effectively retain complex knowledge (usually biology, I’m a biology major) for years. I just don’t see a space in the system where that particular skill is especially useful or consistently rewarded. But at the same time, I’m sick of playing the password games.
I was fortunate enough throughout my K-12 schooling to be very gifted within my classes and to always have the opportunity to try to understand concepts, rather than just guess passwords. However, I’ve become increasingly disenchanted with being stuck in a system that rewards things like password guessing. I’ve found a huge problem at my own university to be the related “password list rote memorization.” The examination system very strongly rewards remembering things only for 4-ish weeks at a time (the approximate length of time between exams) and then immediately forgetting them. It’s incredibly frustrating and it feels like my courses are wasting years of my life completely unnecessarily. I attempt to cram as much knowledge into my head as I can in a time period that’s too short for me to retain anything, achieve the reward of the exam grade, and then forget the material and never look at it again.
Eliezer’s articles have been some of the most thought-provoking pieces I’ve ever read, and they challenge me to actually figure out ways to use my learning to improve my life and create changes in my environment, rather than just getting gold stars on arbitrary goals, like exams, that are artificially created by someone else, but aren’t practically benefiting anyone. But as someone finishing undergrad soon, I’m at a loss as to how I might move forward without spending most of my time playing more password games (i.e. going to grad school).
Does anyone have any suggestions for alternative things I might devote myself to? I actually do have an uncommonly good memory when I can learn things properly the first time, and with strategically spaced repetitions I can effectively retain complex knowledge (usually biology, I’m a biology major) for years. I just don’t see a space in the system where that particular skill is especially useful or consistently rewarded. But at the same time, I’m sick of playing the password games.