January 14th, 2008 : Information Parasite
I am an information parasite. I thrive on information. I sit and absorb as much info as my curious little ears can take in. It’s not all relevant. It’s not all useful. This doesn’t matter though, it’s information and thats what I need. I don’t always even remember the info I take in, but the important part was that for an instant, if only an instant, I had that knowledge.
I came to this conclusion today while walking back to my dorm room. Last semester I finished up my math minor, but I had not taken Linear Algebra yet. If I took Linear Algebra this semester I would have to pay extra because I would be in “credit overload” with 20 or 21 credits. It would also give me a lot of homework to work on. Going into this semester I saw that I was going to have a bit more free time on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and have already told myself I want to use this time to improve my photography, writing skills, website design and other projects I wanted to get done.
So I decided to audit the class. So basically I’m taking Linear Algebra without paying for the credits, doing any homework or taking any tests/quizzes. (Although I do foresee myself participating in this class since it’s a small class of eight people and the information is interesting.)
The big thing that struck me though, is my motivation for taking this class is almost purely curiosity. I’m not getting any credits for it and I can’t get credits for it if I would change my mind. I’m not entirely sure if I know what this means, if it means anything at all, or if this is worth thinking over in more depth.
I’m thinking that it comes down to a love of learning. I love to learn new things, I like hearing about new technologies, I find it interesting to look into things I know nothing about. The downfall to this is that I find myself knowing a very little about a very lot of stuff, which then becomes muddled in my mind and I end up knowing nothing about a lot, but I do remember that I knew something at one time.
This may require some rethinking.