learning

The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.

I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me.

Experience is the hardest kind of teacher.

It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward.

“Can you imagine a smart guy with a bad memory?” he asks. “When you can’t remember somebody’s name, you look stupid. Memory and smartness are integrated.”

School is learning things you don't want to know, surrounded by people you wish you didn't know, while working toward a future you don't know will ever come.

Never memorise what you can look up in a book.

What we want to bear is inversely correlated with what we need to hear in order to learn and to grow.

If you read the literature on what makes for a meaningful college experience, almost all of the literature stresses the way the student interacts with their institution: when I show up on campus on day one, how do I behave? Do I seek out the most interesting professors and take their classes? Do I willingly throw myself into the experience or do I smoke dope in my room? The variable is you, not the institution.

Quality of to your education depends mainly on you, not that much on the school. There is this illusion that education is prepackaged consumer product that you passively take from the shelf which is wrong.

The best teachers I remember from school had three things in common:

1. They had high standards. Like three year olds testing their parents, students will test teachers to see if they can get away with low-quality work or bad behavior. They won’t respect the teachers who don’t call them on it.
2. They liked us. Like dogs, kids can tell very accurately whether or not someone wishes them well. I think a lot of our teachers either never liked kids much, or got burned out and started not to like them. It’s hard to be a good teacher once that happens. I can’t think of one teacher in all the schools I went to who managed to be good despite disliking students.
3. They were interested in the subject. Most of the public school teachers I had weren’t really interested in what they taught. Enthusiasm is contagious, and so is boredom.