Operation Scholar-Without-College

"Humiliation and mental oppression by ignorant and selfish teachers wreak havoc in the youthful mind that can never be undone and often exert a baleful influence in later life." -Albert Einstein

I am a learning junkie. Always have been. The problem is, I don't like school very much. I went to really good primary and secondary schools and have taken a bunch of college courses at good schools but I get really bored easily. Classes never move fast enough for me and I've always been in trouble with teachers and professors for getting ahead of my peers, which is stifling and frustrating. It doesn't help that I'm a freethinker who likes to search outside the box for answers rather than regurgitate what someone else thinks. Teachers are rarely fond of that, only the best of the best want students to be that way.

I come from a super-academic family where almost everyone has at least a master's degree and there are several Ph.D.s (with more in progress), including my mother (who was the first). So, school is frustrating but not finishing is also frustrating and a disappointment to them all. I just can't win.

Of course, now I have another factor (a very common one these days) of not being able to afford school. Even if I could get loans I do not want to do it that way. I've watched my friends struggle for decades under the weight of loans and college was a LOT cheaper when they went.

In the end, though, a degree isn't that important to me. What I care about is learning. The only thing I miss about school itself is the conversations that make you think more deeply about the subject. These days, though, I'm finding that online more and more. Not to mention that I can now watch lectures from schools that would probably never have me, read journals I never knew existed, and keep up with the absolute latest studies and experiments. I'm so grateful to be alive in this day and age with all these opportunities for learning outside the classroom. I think I mentioned this before but it bears repeating: I'm also grateful to the American Museum of Natural History, particularly Neil deGrasse Tyson, for their excellent lecture series, even though I haven't been able to even afford to attend those recently. Still, they are responsible for my rediscovery of my love for math and science, plus anthropology and other related fields of inquiry.

Today I joined the local library at last. It's a pretty good one for a small town and is part of a consortium that carries plenty more books than we have right in town. I've been reading about quantum and theoretical physics quite a bit lately and decided it was about time I take these studies seriously. To that end, I checked out Relativity by Albert Einstein and A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. I read the latter years ago but simply can't believe I never read the original Einstein itself, no matter how much I've studied that theory.

Is that the best way to go? I don't know, I don't have anyone guiding me in this.

For fun, I also checked out Astronomy by Mark A. Garlick and A Devil's Chaplain by Richard Dawkins. Luckily, this library gives you four weeks with any older book! They'll even let you renew twice, but I'm hoping I won't need that privilege. At the same time I'm working my way through books on algebra, geometry, and calculus to refresh my memory and expand on what I know.

I realize that all this learning might make it even harder to go back to school (see the boredom problem above) but I'm also aware that I may never get back there and I just can't wait. It's not like I'd have a shot of getting a job in the sciences without a degree but this is the best I can do. My brain needs the exercise, anyway. Years in the music business rotted it pretty thoroughly, as can happen when you have to focus on fluff like what someone wears or how to write an effective fake bio to make them look more interesting. Even the intellectual challenges always felt so unimportant.

Most of my educational background is very much in the humanities but the more I get to know myself the more I realize I missed my true passions and (according to testing) talent. It's astounding how easily you can get swept up in a direction that you never sought out in the first place. Time to get back to myself.

The most pressing challenge at the moment, though, is to find the time to pursue all these things without wrecking my business and personal life. It might be nice to get some sleep at some point, too.

World's Smallest Political Quiz

One fact about my family has defined more about the way I look at everything than any other: My father has been a passionate Republican for my whole life while my mother was just as passionate of a Democrat. It was like growing up with James Carville and Mary Matalin in reverse, only not political operatives but just intelligent and educated voters who care. Objectively, their points of view were unsurprising, as he was an executive at large companies while she was a Ph.D. who opted to teach in and, eventually, run public high schools instead of working in the relative luxury of colleges. They generally lived by what they preached and that obviously led to some heated debates at the dinner table. While this drove me absolutely nuts as a child it also made me learn the importance of being politically aware very early on.

The second most important lesson I learned is to respect people who disagree with you. Sometimes it feels like I'm the only person in Generations X or Y who feels that way. The vitriol between parties makes me physically ill when it's my friends spouting it. Disagreements are necessary and even helpful but the sheer petty meanness from both major parties is purely depressing and helps not one single person in this world.

Even worse, I've never fit on the right/left line, so the debates have always made me feel like even more of an outcast than I felt from being a geeky girl with odd interests all my life. I've also found that a lot of people I've met who THINK they know what party they belong in actually disagree quite a lot with that party. That's one of the many problems of a two-party system, many (if not most) people join a party that fits one or two of their pet issues and ignore that party's position on everything else.

So, you can imagine how thrilled I was to receive an email from Dad with a link to The World's Smallest Political Quiz and a note about how he was surprised by his results. I immediately took it and, while not surprised when it told me I was a libertarian (I joined the Libertarian party a while back after doing a lot of research before transferring my voter registration to a new state), it was a revelation to see just how intensely libertarian I am. What validation! People have been trying to convince me I'm a Democrat for years despite my enormous issues with many of that party's stances and their underlying system of beliefs. I knew that wasn't right.

Being a natural skeptic in general, though, I felt the need to test the quiz a bit further and had my boyfriend take it. He scored precisely where I expected, as pretty much a super-liberal. Yup, I ended up with a significant other almost as different in his beliefs as my mother was to my father. We really do grow up to be our parents!

So now I want to encourage everyone in the country to take this quiz, it only takes a couple of minutes but it is by far the best way I've found to distill what you think into something quantifiable. The other wonderful thing about the quiz is that it will lead you into ways to explore the parties you might fit well into, regardless of which they may be. No matter how politically aware you may be there is always more to learn. Always.

Perhaps the most important thing about this quiz and the group that publishes it is that they are trying to redefine the political landscape, get away from the left/right line that leaves so many people like me out in the cold. Libertarians AREN'T conservatives, as many people think, and statists aren't liberals. They use a diamond-shaped chart that makes so much more sense than any straight line ever could, the world isn't flat and neither should our political options be. There is no category where you can divide the nation's population into exactly two positions, let alone one as sophisticated and complicated as politics.

John Adams famously said, "There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and converting measures into opposition to each other." The man should be considered a prophet.

Please take this quiz!

The link again: The World's Smallest Political Quiz