School.

The mere enunciation of this singular, seemingly innocent syllable always hurled me into some combination of anger, distaste, fear, and — the crowd favorite — stress. I cannot count all the mornings I lay motionless in bed, accompanied by only the monotonous clang of my alarm and a boiling indifference to the hours of drudgery that lay before me. I’d drag myself through my self-crafted resentment as if it were some awfully viscous fluid engulfing the world, engulfing my thoughts, and I’d barely heave my way to breakfast, to the car, to school, to the next class . . . School became an endless procession of work, deadlines, tests — each a duty that I was condemned to fulfill.

Notice just now how I never mentioned what it was that I did, what I acquired, nor what I accomplished at school. And, indeed, this mystical word, “learn,” always seemed to evade me back then, and was all too often replaced by the less mystical “work.” Yet I was no special case. The environment that I grew up in, one shaped by the social network of my peers and friends, always shouted these scathing, unforgiving critiques of education, weaving an inherently oppressive narrative. And so, steadfastly adhering to this idea, I saw homework merely as a totalitarian measure to exact complete control over my soul, my life, and I grew so shackled to this belief that it slowly started to seep into my reality. And, just like that, I, like all of my peers, became a victim of my own delusion, of false wisdom that had been unwittingly birthed by words that weren’t even mine, but rather forced to be mine by the unforgiving demands of those around me.

But alas, time had its course, and I began to gradually develop my own voice, watching it sprout from the dark, damp, claustrophobic soil of insecurity into the arms of sunlight, with a sort of vibrant admiration akin to that of a florist’s gaze toward their garden. This tender yet persistent confidence that at last grew from the remains of my delusions enabled me to develop a more intimate connection to this once distant concept that was learning.

In 2020, the outbreak of COVID-19 brought the world to a standstill. Quarantined and emancipated from what I had so fervently believed was a prison (school), I at first celebrated the prospect of spending all my time playing video games, talking to friends, goofing around, anything but learning — or rather, to be more in line with my course of thinking at the time — working. So this was precisely the circadian rhythm that I unwittingly fell victim to for a couple of weeks, gaming the day away. But something began to well up inside of me, some subtle yet poignant feeling that I was missing something. At the time, I couldn’t quite formulate this melting pot of seemingly arbitrary misgivings into a coherent word or phrase, but it wasn’t long until I did.

Perhaps school — or at least my preconceived notion of what school was — cast this illusion upon me that learning had to be facilitated by a third party. All my learning took place within school at the time, and I had never even considered the possibility of liberating this mysterious creature from my experience at school. But this confinement of learning to a single space was, ironically, precisely what cast such a monstrous glow on the word as it lurked within my mind.

And so the moment I opened a math textbook autonomously, for the first time not in search of a homework problem, nor to study for a test, nor out of necessity, I realized exactly what I had longed for all this time: the purest kind of learning, the kind that wasn’t motivated by the desire to get a good grade or evade the disappointment of those around me. It was then that the impermeable barriers concealing learning cracked open, demystified, and I could finally grasp it, cradle it in my arms, and foster it of my own accord.

From then on, the looming dread that the word “school” always used to carry gradually began to lift. Teachers seemed more human than ever, and less like apathetic enforcers of the totalitarian regime I so fervently believed school embodied. Yet, most importantly, past the once impenetrable fog populated by endless processions of tests and homework and projects, finally shone a light that could steer me on course for success: a beam that radiated the promise of “knowledge,” of “learning” in its purest form. This light permeated even the thickest melancholy, the most suffocating stress, the most viscous boredom, and directed my focus to the inherent beauty that lies in the journey of learning rather than the instant gratification of the outcome.

I find this to be a testament to all who find difficulty deriving meaning from their education, to all my peers who drag their own plight, half-mast, as the weight of their stress atop their backpacks inevitably condemns them to an indifferent, cold, perpetual march into oblivion. Learning for the sake of learning should act as a beacon of purpose for us all.