I remember vividly the first time I ever read something. It is my earliest memory. I don't know exactly how old I was, maybe five.

My parents had an old Pepsi crate hanging on the wall in our kitchen, used as a way to display some random trinket or another. I asked my mom over and over what it said, trying to figure out how the symbols there could mean 'Pepsi'. Eventually, I figured it out, and I guess you could say I've been a reader ever since.

I read a lot as a child. Often, in fact, reading took the place of social interaction. This is, no doubt, a contribution to my current-day tendency to ignore social cues and say exactly what I'm thinking. In Junior High School I even took a class wherein all we did, everyday, was read. That's basically like college is meant to be, except that I rarely read anything in college.

You see, I am, above all, a person of - shall we say - selective dedication. When something grabs my attention, you would be hard pressed to interfere. My family and friends can attest to that. I can spend hours and hours doing something without stopping, slowing down, or being bored. This trait is what I think allows me to be a good programmer. Programming is a task that benefits highly from repeated marathons of attention, and rewards you with actually letting you solving a problem. There are a lot of problems to solve, and therefore my attention is very often spent programming.

College is, in many ways, broken. This isn't really the fault of any one entity, but more so the whole educational system, from preschool on up. The emphasis is always on doing things exactly the same. You do the same work as everybody in your class. Your class does the same exact work as the class before. Even amongst different teachers, or different schools, this is the case. Now, on some level, that is understandable. It's hard to imagine a more flexible system being successful, but that's not really the point I'm making. What I'm really trying to get at is that for people like me, this is not enough.

I don't care, frankly, about the fact that F'(x) is just a function of the slope. That doesn't affect my life. It's sort of interesting, sure. Even a self-proclaimed math retard such as myself can see the many applications of having this knowledge. But it doesn't hold my attention. If you cannot hold my attention then I do not, will not, and can not care.

This sort of situation repeats itself a lot in this country. The legitimate genius people have no problem with the current system because they are able to do anything they want without much effort. There's no trouble for them, because their attention doesn't need to be focused on something to do it well. I am not in this category. I, and many other people, are in the "attention required" category. Make a case for what you are teaching and I'll take it under advisement. If you can't even go to the trouble of engaging me, why am I going to waste my attention? I only have so much. I'd rather give it to a task that deserves it, or at the very least, one that wants it.

I suspect this is an unfortunate by-product of our society. This country is great in many ways, but the educational system is horrifying. Everything is tailored to the lowest common denominator, and, not to be overly insulting of some of our countrymen, but.. it's an impressive low. The real trouble here might be something a bit less "America" and a bit more "Humanity" - marriage to the status quo.

Change is in many ways a somewhat scary proposition. Our current system has been in place for a very long time, so why change it? Well, if you never change it, how can it improve? Just think about it for a minute. Change has three possible outcomes: you can improve something, keep it the same, or suck at it more. The key, though, is that if you figure out a way to do it better, then better becomes the new status quo. At some point a caveman invented fire. What if that was 'good enough' for him? Never would an oven have been invented. Never would the caveman have gotten on an airplane, or eaten peanut butter, or had cake on his birthday.

Education in this country has been comfortable with its status quo for far, far to long. It needs to be updated so people like me, people who need to be engaged, do not slip through the cracks. I am tired of being called a slacker. I am not a slacker. I just don't give a shit..unless there's a reason to.