I never read books about butterflies, but thanks to my grandparents, I knew the white ones were “bad,” because they ate our cabbage. So I was free to chase them, and–something I am not too proud of now—stick toothpicks through them to keep for later exploration. I loved anything that had to do with getting my hands in the mud: plowing, planting, sowing. I observed how rainfall changed the texture of the soil and how beets thrived better in the shade. When it was time to go back to my parents, my grandma would send me off with a bag of proudly picked fruit, and the first thing my mom would do was sigh and ask, “Were you up to your ears in mud again?” She hated scraping the soil from under my nails. But those were the best days.
Now, I am a Cornell student—taking an environmental science course instead of playing in the mud—and learning has become different. I am chasing information, trying to keep up with every lecture, planting some sprouts of interesting ideas into my essays, and recycling templates to keep up. I’m up to my ears in assignments, but knowledge slips through the perforations in my butterfly net. These butterflies have voices. They see my struggle, but all they say is: You have to manage your time better. We know finals season is hard.
As university students, we are expected to synthesize vast amounts of information, do it quickly, and, ideally, produce something original. Yet, the knowledge barely brushes against the surface of our minds—just enough to last until finals before fading into irrelevance. Learning has become passive and far from enjoyable. Discussion sections follow bullet points, covering key arguments, but fail in allowing us the time to immerse ourselves—to associate, visualize, relate, synthesize, and even feel what we are learning. Instead of taking time to reflect on personal experiences, stories of our friends, and news from around the world, we type “give me real-world examples” into an AI tool and ineffectively apply theory to real life. And I blame it all on time: we aren’t given the time to learn, only to study.
Cornell has a wonderful support system; without the university’s Learning Strategies Center, I wouldn’t know just how many colors I could add to a Google Calendar. The center’s advice goes: “Think about the hours of the day that are not flexible or available for work. Write these down on the weekly calendar: class times, meetings, standing appointments; eating, sleeping, exercising; work, organizations, church, volunteer activities; family time, social time.” Some people I have met over the course of writing this took the center’s advice to heart—by scheduling their showers.
Each Cornell newsletter also includes unsolicited time management advice for students. Something like: Don’t forget to notice how the sky changes colors. I’ll be sure to put that on my calendar—right after I crawl out of Uris Library at 11:30 p.m.. I’m sure the pitch-black slope must be beautiful at that hour.
Please don’t mistake my cynicism for dismissal. These subtle, psychological interventions are not useless. There’s comfort in seeing your next three preliminary exams neatly highlighted on a semester calendar, and unloading your being into to-do lists and calculations does provide peace of mind. I wonder if the Learning Strategies Center practices what it preaches, though; when I requested a meeting, they declined, blaming it on their particularly busy schedule.
Yet, the real issue isn’t time management, nor is it the relentless productivity spiral we feel compelled to join. The problem is how this affects the way we learn.
The pace of knowledge production and consumption has skyrocketed. We compress centuries of research into a single semester, merge ten disciplines into one course, and are assigned ten readings a week—only to end up skimming, bookmarking them for “later,” or simply skipping them entirely.
Take a look at the current job market, which signals that even obtaining an advanced degree cannot save you from job market irrelevancy . Today’s undergraduates venture forth with skills that their parents’ generation never had at their age. But in this push for computer-like efficiency, we are missing a fundamental point: There is only so much a person can do while staying sane, ideally happy, and engaged in meaningful work—work that is rewarding both in process and outcome.
We often say we’re “planting the seed,” a metaphor for proposing an idea. But we seem to be losing touch with this metaphor. On my grandparents' farm, there was something special about being a part of the process from the very beginning: planting the seed, watering the soil, shielding the sprouts from strong winds, adding fertilizer, and finally, harvesting the fruit. It took time and patience. It had a meaningful beginning and a rewarding end.
Human learning is experiential. A baby is not born with exceptional memorization or unlimited storage, but with the ability to distinguish faces, sounds, and voices; and thus it learns by forming strong associations, not by processing data. According to Robert Epstein, a research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, the key to this kind of learning is attention, empathy, curiosity, and human relationships. His 2016 satirical essay, “The empty brain” (which has a web address that reads, "your brain does not process information and it is not a computer"), takes aim at the infamous comparisons between our brains and computers. Even the language we use to describe our minds, such as "data processing," "storage," or "retrieval,” he argues, reduces the complexity of human development.
I believe that humans come to this world to form connections and experiences, and hence, this is precisely how we learn. There is no doubt we are associational, we are abstract, and we are emotional thinkers. We have empathy, and it distinguishes us from the most advanced AI. The point is: we learn through experience, and it takes time.
When I heard my grandma shouting across the garden rows, I knew I should get back “to business.” That is to say that life on the farm has never been lazy; there is so much to take care of before winter comes. But instead of solely laboring to stock up for the cold season, you savor a berry or two, listen to your grandparents’ childhood stories, step on a nettle in the same annoying spot twice, and think about the future while monotonously picking weeds. You try, you connect, you learn, and you experience. I reckon that our learning strategies should help us savor learning, not as a strategy, but as a process. ⬥
On The Optimization of Learning
Is our ruthless quest for efficiency in education making us dumber?
Artwork by Melody Qian.
Anastasiia Ryshytiuk writes because she reflects a lot (some might call it overthinking). She is always down for a good conversation and a long walk, which might explain her choice to major in Urban and Regional Studies.