Undergraduate / "everything that extends beyond my knowledge" - APPLES - Brown what don't you know? [5]

French novelist Anatole France wrote: "An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't." What don't you know?

In first grade, we did math with fruit. If there are twelve apples, and you have four, how many are left? We would count on our fingers, scribble tally marks with wide-lead pencils, scratch our heads, and finally come up with eight. In first grade, numbers weren't easy, but the concept was simple: Take what you have, and what remains is what you don't have. Take what I know, and everything else is what I don't know.

What I don't know is everything that extends beyond the knowledge I possess. That knowledge, however, is in constant flux. With each second that passes, an experience comes that is unique to all those before it, and with it comes new knowledge. In the last sixty seconds I have learned that my bedpost is perfect for scratching itchy feet, that Bon Iver plays perfect thinking music, and that my laptop's left speaker is far louder than the right. Useful knowledge? Maybe not, but it's three more apples I didn't have before.

Life is unpredictable; it's hard to tell what the next moment will bring. That uncertainty is a beautiful motivator. Each page turned, each step taken, each question asked, or even each itchy foot looking for a place to scratch it, brings new knowledge. There is an infinite amount of unknown knowledge; I won't know what I don't know until I know it. Therein lies the challenge; my thirst for knowledge is fueled by a desire to discover what I do not know.

It is said that throughout life, one never stops learning. I both agree and disagree with this statement. New experiences, and with them new knowledge, can be found at any age. I believe that one only stops learning when they are satisfied with what they know; I hope to never be satisfied.

There are an infinite number of apples on the tree of knowledge; through my education and my life, I'm just trying to pick as many of them as I can.