I saw a YouTube video of a guy making a photobioreactor to grow algae and he used this website sort of as a log for his engineering. And I love the idea of doing that. Even if I am throwing my voice into the wind.

I have always been fascinated by explorers, engineers, and polymaths using notebooks to capture their thoughts and ideas. Obviously the most notable being DaVinci. But even Lewis and Clark did this as they traversed across North America.

This is by no means a drawing, or nearly as sophisticated or as deeply thought out as DaVinci’s notebook. But it is unique in its own way as well. Almost like Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations but less stoic and more a reflection.

I imagine my thoughts will be jumbled, my grammar messy, my opinions only half formed. But those things are the point. This is basically a public diary. A forum to think and discover. To explore and push boundaries and ideas.

A little background on myself to allow a shared understanding of the ideas I present. I am a pharmacy student currently, but it wasn’t the path I had imagined I would have taken in life. My father was an electrician and I had been interested in mathematics and engineering. I even completed an Associates degree in mathematics and had taken a few engineering and coding courses. I am somewhat novices to engineering and coding still. Even in math I only completed my calculus sequence, Linear Algebra, ODE, and a discrete math course. But I believe engineering is very fascinating. It is a world of doing and thinking. Learning from mistakes, not memorization. Here I am referring to engineering not simply as the career field but the act or mindset associated with it. I think having projects and doing things is vital to humans. To be able to create something and say you did that.

I am also deeply interested in ecology, medicine/pharmacology, chemistry, physics, botany, herbalism, philosophy, hydrology, and learning how to learn in a sense.

I think far too often we limit what it means to learn, we believe it is just being able to regurgitate a formula or a definition/fact. But I think there is a difference between knowing things and our level of thinking. Critical thinking is crucial, being able to come up with a thought and line of logic for that thought. To be given a problem and analyze how you attack it. I believe this is far more valuable than garnering facts and shards of knowledge. In very imprecise terms, it is the difference between being smart and being intelligent.

I have also thought a lot about what an optimal experience would be when it comes to learning. Eventually I want to have kids and I want to be able to homeschool them or at least give them very solid mentorship when it comes to learning. Often times we see it as a duty, as a must. Being forced to attend school, to sit down, shut up and pay attention. But that is not a healthy relationship with learning. Learning should demand participation but be guided. Every time I am on chatGPT and fall down a rabbit hole, I understand the importance of a mentor. Someone to gently guide your thoughts, to push your understanding, help you see the flaws in your logic. A mentor is vital, but often teachers don’t (or rather can’t) have that relationship with their students due to class sizes.

But, I think there is a lot more to learning as well. School pushes a lot of content, but I often forgot everything I had learned. I don’t think this is necessarily my fault (though I could have definitely studied more). Schools aren’t really even designed to optimize retention, even though that’s the primary thing they push. I am no learning specialist by any means. But there has to be a better way to approach how we learn. How we encode and retain that information.

I have watched quite a few videos from a YouTuber named Justin Sung and he brings up many interesting ideas like making the information relevant, doing mind-maps, etc. Though it often seems like he cuts his videos off before really saying the important thing. However, the idea has been most intriguing to me and it is something I want to explore further.

I believe there is also a sense of accomplishment and individualness that needs to be associated with learning. Projects, games, experiments, cohesive workshops that connect ideas and thoughts. Things that make the experience unique and exciting. Learning should be exciting. You should look forward to expanding your understanding of the universe and your place in it.

Lastly, I just want to say that humans should be polymaths. There’s this amazing quote from Robert A. Heinlein that I like a lot, “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

We were never designed to be locked into one area of thought for our entire lives. Branching out is vital to our understanding of the universe around us. We are complex and emotional beings that seek many different fulfillments in life.