Learning to Unlearn ?

When I first came to college, I met people with diverse interests from across the country. I had a good english education, so you would think it was easy for me to hold conversations with people, but you'd be wrong.

I couldn't take part in conversations other than matters related to STEM or cinema, this took a toll on me. I then reflected on why that was case, it made me question what did I learn back in school ? then I realised I was so focused on learning what was in my text books I never bothered to look into other subjects or matters. I remember sitting silently looking at my phone when my friends were discussing different political ideologies and their stance on it. I wanted to take part in these conversations, but felt so helpless that I couldn't bring anything to the conversation.

Till highschool I never bothered to have these views because all the conversations I had with my friends were about everything that was already in the book, nothing out of the box. No one really asked why did they do that ? why is this true ? we just believed it. This is the place where my trait of just accepting things as they were came about, I didn't care about what the ruling party or opposition party did or how a policy change in another country would affect me or about any of the wars. I wasn't ignorant but just unaware of things. Over the last year I had to learn how to unlearn things and learn how to question things if they didn't feel right to me.

Over the last year, all I did was listen to conversations between people and ask questions about every new thing I heard, trust me it's more embarassing to pretend you know something you don't. Slowly I started making my own opinions and now I believe I am in a much better position intellectually.

One thing I took away from this journey is that its really important to look up from your books and explore other subjects, have opinions even if its clashing with the majority, make conversations with people from diverse fields and lastly never stop questioning things. The right question takes you a long way.

your textbooks don't cover even 0.1% of whats out there, so look up !