One of the greatest side effects of taking so many classes and learning so much is that you start feeling invincible about learning. The more you learn, the more you feel capable of learning. When I fist came to the United States, I was overwhelmed and intimidated by my classmates who seemed to have been born with a keyboard attached. Many of the Carnegie Mellon Computer Science students start programming well before they get to college. I, on the other hand, had never seen anything more advanced than a Commodore till the minute I stepped on campus. During college, I somehow figured out that the only difference between me and these people was a few months/years of experience that I could catch up to much more quickly that I’d imagined.
Since graduation, I took classes in Italian, French, Sign Language, Yoga, 3-D graphics, Art History, Novel Writing, Alexander Technique, and Japanese. At least six of those were subjects I’d never previously been exposed to. The neat thing is that the more classes I took, the more I got inspired to take. Next semester, I want to start learning how to play the saxophone, and take cooking and ballroom dancing classes. A few years ago, all of these would have sounded implausible to me. I have no ear, I am extremely clumsy, and I definitely can’t cook. The difference is that less than a year ago I felt equally hopeless about Japanese. When I got the offer to go to Tokyo, Jake and I opened the language portion of Encarta and listened to a voice pronouncing the first ten digits and I told him, “There’s absolutely no way I’m gonna learn that language.” Today, numbers are the least of my problem.
The more I learn, the less I fear learning. I feel powerful and invincible. I feel like the only difference between me and a doctor is that he chose to go to medical school and I didn’t. I feel that these options are available to me. If I wanted, I could be a lawyer or a doctor or a pilot. With the right amount of time and practice, I could be whatever my heart desires. Anything.
Isn’t that a neat feeling?
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