Thinking back, I have spent a lot of years being educated. Thirteen years for K-12 in public schools, four years of undergraduate and four part-time years of graduate school.
While I realize the intent in K-12 was to provide a "well rounded" education, there was a fair amount of time spent on stuff that has not been retained and never used. The title of this piece is one example. Algebra was a required course, but I have no recollection of how it works and have never had a need for it in my profession. I took two years of French. As a result I cannot speak, write, or follow a conversation in French. According to my brother, the only value to studying foreign languages in school was that he can now ask someone to go to bed with him in three different languages (he obviously got more out of it than I did). I took music for three years, but can't read music. In English classes, I learned to appreciate Lord of the Rings, to dislike Shakespeare, to not have any interest in poetry and to find that diagramming sentences was a total waste of time . Physics was a mystery. Shop class taught me how to use basic tools so I can hang a picture or change a washer in a faucet, but I would never try to actually build something. Others are handy; I am not.
Looking back at my teachers, I view tenure as a double-edged sword. I had a lot of teachers who cared and wanted to do a good job, and I had many who were not very motivated and could best be described as jerks. Still others such as the one math teacher I had, was very nice but his communication style was on a level that many (including me) did not comprehend what he was trying to teach. I liked him; I just didn't get what he was trying to teach.
In undergraduate school, while I majored in Nursing, I took a variety of non-Nursing courses. Among them were Sociology, Philosophy, Phys Ed (golf, tennis and bowling, none of which I have done again in over 30 years), three different chemistry courses, and other classes whose subjects I can't even remember. While there may be pieces of these courses that I actually remember and use, the vast majority must be in part of my brain that I just don't use and, for the most part, can't access.
In graduate school, I had to take Statistics. What I took away from the class was that, if I ever needed to use statistics, I would pay someone else to do the work for me. Accounting and Managerial Finance have actually been useful because I have had to manage multi-million dollar budgets. Christian Social Principles (it was a Catholic college) taught me about ethics. Nursing Research taught me how to read a research article and differentiate between good and sloppy research. Nursing Theories taught me various theories. I found that professionally, I am eclectic in this regard; I do not embrace one single theory, but rather parts of several. Nursing concepts taught me how to examine an issue in depth. Since part of my personality is that I am very analytical, it was helpful in structuring my thinking.
Overall, there has been a lot of "stuff" poured into my brain over the years. Some of it has been helpful to what I do today, some has been "nice to know" and some has been a colossal waste of time. Over the years, my brain has learned to retain and use what I need, to know where to look for things I might need, and to forget a lot of the useless stuff. I also separate work from pleasure. I enjoy history and trivia. I can discuss the Battle of Rourke's Drift (the British won) or tell you what famous entertainer died while sitting on the toilet (Elvis). It all boils down to knowing what you need to know for work and what you want to know for the rest (and Algebra is not one of them).
