Lifelong learning

“Lifelong learning” has many meanings to me: to stay curious, to listen to the experiences of others, to ask many questions of how the world around us works. Since I graduated from high school and moved away from my parents, I have learned to cook my own food, file taxes, discover my fashion style, and so much more. I have learned that learning is not easy, I might burn my food, I might wear the wrong colours, and that is alright. What matters most is that I can learn from the experience, that I can adjust my future expectation, apply the success and mistakes of the past, engage and evaluate the potential solutions for future scenarios.

Lifelong learning is not simply about continuously excelling academically, nor pursuing a profession of which learning is a part of it. Lifelong learning is a skill that, in turn, needs learning to achieve. It means that one will face setbacks, confusion, but it takes effort and curiosity to fully achieve such learning. Engineering studies, especially at McGill University, have prepared me to accept that I am never the smartest person in the room; instead, I should learn from the smart people in said room who have the most unique life experience that brought them there. These experiences will guarantee to give you a different perspective on any topic.

In short: stay curious. It should be a part of one’s subconsciousness to be a lifelong learner, as learning should not be something that one needs to do to continue. I do not need nor want to be in the situation of solving an engineering problem to learn and stay curious. I want to have my mind in a mindful state such that it can wander the thoughts and question the nature of things. Albeit, great curiosity requires great inspiration. For me, these inspirations were the many science discoveries and the vast repository of inventions by the great engineers of the world. For you, it could be the music you grew up listening to, it could be the love from your caregivers that you want to spread to the world, and so on. Find your inspiration, stay curious!