Need to Know

I spend an inordinate amount of time learning. At least I think I do. But maybe, much of that time, I'm not actually learning anything worthwhile. Let me explain: For me, the line between entertainment and education is very blurry.*

Nearly every day, I'll get an itch to learn about some random topic, and I'll spend three or four hours researching it on the internet. I get really excited each month when the latest edition of Wired magazine shows up in my mailbox. If I have time to kill on campus, I'll read the New York Times. I listen to NPR programming for probably at least two hours a day on average. All this time I spend reading and listening, I think I'm learning things. Learning things about current events, about people and the ways they think and interact, not to mention thousands of bits of useless trivia. And I love every minute of it. I feel all smart and intellectual. I feel like I'm spending hours amassing valuable knowledge to apply later in my life. But am I really? Is this stuff really at all useful? Do I really need to hear Malcolm Gladwell tell hilarious stories about his early days at the Washington Post? Do I need to know what retired U.S. intelligence officers thought about invading Iraq? Is that going to be valuable to know at some point in my life? Or is it all just vacuous entertainment for snobs?

This is a debate that has been creeping to the front of my brain over the last year or so. How much time should a person spend accumulating knowledge, and when should they start trying to use and apply it? What is important to know? Is all knowledge important, or should you only try to learn things when you really need to? I really have no idea what the answer is yet. I'm pretty sure about one thing though: By the time I'm fifty, I'll either be changing the world, or I'll have spent thousands of hours doing nothing but becoming a Trivial Pursuit master.


* Yes, I realize that statement is tantamount to tattooing the word "nerd" across my forehead. [Tantamount. What a cheap, pretentious word. I love it.]