About two students per high school apply to the Ivy League every year. This doesn’t account for the fact that some schools foster many more Ivy League-bound students than other schools, meaning that some schools have fewer applicants than this average. This can create additional pressure, as applying to an Ivy League school is akin to taking a shot—the only price you pay is the application fee. If your hopes really are shattered on Ivy Day, there must be something wrong, because they should’ve already been cracked when you saw the acceptance rates (as of now, the highest rate is Cornell’s at 8.4%). For all these students, they are applying to prestigious institutions for the chance at achieving higher and higher levels of education with like-minded peers.
Yet, fewer and fewer students are applying to these institutions. This is not just because more and more students are rejecting the Ivy League and its false superiority. I believe that it’s because the apparent value of education is quietly slipping away from too many students.
Nowadays, there is an increasing number of students who don’t believe in getting an education. Many young people believe that education is a waste of time, especially if the material being learned feels less applicable to real-world situations. For example, there is a limited number of real-world applications for something like learning about chemical structures in AP Chemistry unless you are interested in pursuing a career in chemistry. If you already have your heart set on becoming a chemical engineer, English classes may not seem directly helpful to that cause. Many students don’t even see themselves needing to get into a supposedly “good” college, because who needs Harvard when community college exists?
More and more students see school subjects as disconnected from each other. Someone who aspires to be a chemist might not care much about English or Studio Art and could start neglecting those classes as a result.
The problem with this thinking is that it is too constricted. School subjects are actually more connected to each other than one might assume. In ancient times, engineers, mathematicians, and warriors discussed ideas and inventions in the same space. A notable example of this was Alexander the Great, a highly successful war-mongering conqueror, who was tutored by none other than Aristotle, a very notable philosopher and scientist. But in modern times, disciplines such as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) are completely disconnected from the liberal arts. This mindset leads to many issues, the main one being how rigid this mindset is.
Rigidity is the antithesis of a life well-lived. Just as a muscle atrophies when left unmoved for too long, so do things in life. Your dreams, your hopes, your mind—all of it will coalesce and set itself into a rigid and unfulfilling mindset.
An overly rigid mindset will lead one to be in a state of dissatisfaction. To avoid this, a shift in mindset to focus on boredom must occur. As Andreas Elpidorou, who is known for his extensive research on the intricacies of boredom, succinctly states: “boredom promotes movement; movement is essential to well-being; ergo, boredom promotes well-being.”
Boredom is a powerful tool. If you’ve ever had a brilliant thought in the shower, whether it be a quippy comeback you should’ve said, or a solution to an irk that’s been itching far too long, it’s because you were bored, and forced to think in the silence. But now, entertainment is everywhere, serving as a distraction from keeping us bored. TV shows, YouTube videos, podcasts—all of it fills your mind and removes silence. And as more and more children gain access to it, they lose the abilities that boredom gives them, which Jodi Musoff, MA, MEd, and a specialist at the Child Mind Institute, says are planning strategies, problem-solving skills, flexibility, and organizational skills.
When compared to the generation of our grandparents and parents, we are far less able to exhibit the skills that boredom allows us to develop. When you are unable to master the necessary skills required for school material, you lose confidence in your academics. You may lose the urge to keep trying, which leads to even less mastery and confidence, which then spirals down for the worst. Before you know it, your grades have taken a nosedive too far down, and suddenly, you’re in so deep it seems easier to just swim down.
But boredom is the solution that allows you to recover from that dive. Just like a breath of air, it is the opposite of that cloistering feeling of hopelessness. As Elpidorou states, “The state of boredom can motivate one to pursue a new goal when the current goal ceases to be satisfactory, attractive, or meaningful. As such, boredom can help to promote the restoration of the perception that one’s activities are meaningful and congruent with one’s overall projects.” When you’re motivated to pursue other goals, you start to do something positive and make progress in your life. You’re more inclined to make improvements and gain confidence.
There is a drawback, of course. You probably saw it when you read the word: boredom? Boredom is a very painful experience. In an experiment conducted by Dan Gilbert at Harvard University, he ran experiments in which participants sat in an empty room with instructions to do nothing. However, in the empty room was a button they could push. They were told that pushing the button meant they received a big electric shock. Amazingly, the majority chose to push the electric shock instead of just sitting in silence, doing nothing.
Why is boredom so painful? According to Arthur C. Brooks, in an article published in the Harvard Business Review, a reason for this is that, “When you think about nothing while your mind wanders and thinks about, for example, big questions of meaning in your life. What does my life mean? You go to uncomfortable existential questions when you’re bored.”
Yet, these existential questions are vital to be happy and fulfilled. Answering or trying to answer these questions leads us to finding meaning in our lives, which contributes to happiness and motivation to better ourselves.
How does this relate to academics and the disconnect between classes? True academia requires meaning—the whole point of learning, or education, is to find meaning in a myriad of ways. Math is an example of this. It seems like the most meaningless subject (unless you aspire to be a mathematician, for which you must’ve already found meaning in it). How is solving for x helping me make my life better? I can’t tell you—you have to find that for yourself. Ask yourself: How does it make your life better? Is it how it teaches you analytical thinking? Does it allow you to develop open-minded and one-track mindsets? If approached right, does it teach the skill of understanding fundamental rules and finding those patterns in problems?
This question can and should be asked for every subject, for every question, for every problem, and for every connection in between. It must be asked in silence, and borne of boredom. The questions of meaning, of what is the significance of it all, cannot be answered in front of an episode of Gossip Girl, but they can be asked in the darkness of closed eyes, in the silence of nothing.
In that silence, you will regain the business of living: the coherence, the meaning, the messiness, and the significance of it all.