Recently I overheard my classmate talking about that of studying. She goes, “I can’t understand all that trigonometry, would we even need that when we face the real world?” No, I’m not going to talk about those circular functions nor will be constructing proofs for identities; we may not really need that in our search for the so-called “real world’.

One normal college student may one day wake up to the perils of studying, which is to loose the need for learning. Indeed, studying in its most extreme scenarios could squeeze out all enthusiasm from a student to have interest in learning. Let’s now look at how this seems to be done. We may now call a student as a pursuer hereafter.

Our pursuer may one morning wake up late after a sleepless night in order to review for a one-subject exam. You could not blame him for cramming because after all, his professor left him with no choice, 2 inches of reading materials is no joke. He wakes up with something worse than a hangover, his head really hurts but there’s no time thinking about that ’cause he’ll be late for his first class. The real world, can’t we call the present as our real world?

As expected, our pursuer arrives already late for his logic class, and to his surprise, which is not surprising, a graded recitation is being held by the prof. As a consequence, with the mentor thinking that his pupil is not taking his subject that seriously to even arrive on time, our pursuer is subjected to construct proofs using the ten rules of inference which our pursuer hasn’t even fully understood yet. Still, panting from the long run he took to get to class, he didn’t even had the time to sit properly but he quickly faced the problem on the board and prayed that a miracle would happen. The idealistic way of looking into things is to say that even that we may not need to evaluate premises when we apply for a job, nor use modus tollens to hard-boil an egg, the way that we deal with situations involving learning new things, solving problems with every lesson learned and many other more things constitute to the “real” knowledge that we are expected to understand.

On the way to the exam room, our pursuer sees his orgmates happily spending spare time at their tambayan. He’d wish he was part of the fun, but he’d rather get ready for his exam if he knows what’s best for him. He won’t make precious time to just slip away. He used the last minutes to take one final look at his notes before having to receive the test paper. Few things that make our pursuer go on with this kind of life, always in a dire need to review, surpassing limitations to meet deadlines, going beyond what is expected to receive a better standing, are his dreams. Dreams of a better future, a future in which he would enjoy the fruits of his struggles is one of the things our pursuer aspires that’s why he sleep late to study, wake up early to attend classes, keep alert in a boring discussion and so many more.

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” – Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982)