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The professor in the front of the room is droning on and on about some topic that you have absolutely no interest in, and you can feel time slowly creeping along, bringing you ever closer to death while you sit there waving your life goodbye.

Maybe you're that English student being forced to take some ridiculous college math class; you don't see yourself ever needing anything in this class or applying it in your life.

Open your eyes and look around - everything has the capability to teach you something.

As we grow up and acquire knowledge, we build associations and create a framework of possibilities in our heads, helping us make sense of the world around us and guiding us in our lives.

However, this process also constructs walls of resistance to new information. We start filtering our information intake, only absorbing what we agree with or deem useful. We realize that we cannot know everything, thus we sacrifice breadth of knowledge for depth of understanding.

But what if, instead of running away from the overwhelming amounts of information out there, we ran toward it with arms wide open?

Everything observable in the natural world has some kind of meaning and relevance attributable to your daily existence, if you have the courage and the will to look for it.

In my freshman chemistry class, during a discussion about the periodic table, a thought struck me. What if people are like elements in the periodic table?

Some people are more willing to give of themselves and others are more willing to take what those others give. Some people only find stability in their lives by being with another.

But no matter how much we can seek to lump people into a human periodic table, we must also accept that everyone is unique and that - just as ions exist in nature - there is a wide disparity between individuals, even among groups.

In liberal arts classes, we learn that humanity has struggled with the same issues central to daily life for all of recorded existence. Subsequently, these issues span far beyond national and cultural boundaries.

Physics and mathematics present us with the knowledge that we essentially live in a universe of balance. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. For every number, there exists a negative of that number. Every polynomial has roots that exist in complex conjugate pairs.

They also show us that from the basis of the classics we can derive new information that can revolutionize our very modes of thought, such as it is much easier to destroy than to create, yet each of these operations has their uses and is necessary.

Additionally, we are beings of probability that exist in a universe where change is constant and everything is variable - where nothing is certain and the only way to actually know the outcome of an event is to observe it, but the very act of observation determines the outcome.

These examples may be overly simplistic and contrived for some, and I'm sure I'll get a veritable barrage of e-mails from experts telling me I don't know what I'm talking about.

That's probably true. However, I believe that this kind of approach leads to a better understanding and appreciation of knowledge and more students should try it.

An appreciation of knowledge, in turn, leads to societies that are more advanced, more peaceful and more equitable. A survey of the rate of literacy among various countries in the world is very telling.

If you're sitting in class, bored out of your mind and reading this, try reevaluating why you are there in the first place.

Liberate your mind - open your eyes, your ears and your heart. Listen, criticize, synthesize and ask questions. Don't just sit there hoping you learn something. Chase after knowledge, demand it from yourself, your peers, and your professor.

After all, as Francis Bacon once said "knowledge is power." You are a being of energy with the ability to exert the force of your existence on this world over a protracted period of time. Go to work!

Reach the reporter: nicholas.vaidyanathan@asu.edu.


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