It will be useful—eventually.
I am nearly certain that every student in every class wonders at some point, with varying degrees of exasperation, what possible use this will be. (I suspect the phenomenon is more prevalent in algebra classes, but I can testify to the fact that it is not limited to math.)
Well, I am here to tell you that you never know when you’ll find a use for whatever knowledge you’ve got—and I can prove it!
It all started, long ago, when I was in grad school.
Grad school is an expensive proposition. You take whatever financial aid you can get.
What I could get was a graduate assistantship.
And my assistantship took the form of being on the paint crew.
I was a theatre major, you see. There were sets to build. We’ll pass over the disappointment that the teaching assistantships mentioned in the acceptance letter didn’t really exist and the subsequent annoyance of the entire class of graduate students—and note, simply, that I did get to help teach freshman acting eventually, thanks to a) the power of the ask and b) the maternity leave of the teacher. Not everyone was so lucky, and that came later, anyway.
Most of my indentured servitude involved paint.
And the shows produced during those couple of years involved an inordinate amount of wainscoting.
I have a unique and usually useless skill.
I can paint fake wainscoting with the best of ’em.
There’s not a lot of call for this skill. Generally speaking, if one wants wainscoting, one wants real wainscoting. It involves wood and carpentry, not latex and paintbrushes.
I would have said there was no call for this skill, but then…the MotH* took up model trains. At the time, I thought this was an excellent thing. He needs an indoor hobby for those days when golf is out of the question or beyond the budget. Model trains seemed an excellent idea.
That was before he built his little barn and handed it to me with the words, “Here. You can paint that.” (I don’t know why the MotH always issues his requests for help as if he is conferring unbelievable favors upon me. It’s just one of the hazards of married life.)
But here’s the thing.
I can paint that.
I know exactly how to make fake wood (and let’s face it: balsa wood is fake wood) look real.
I learned how in grad school!
That expensive Master’s Degree in that over-saturated field actually has a practical purpose.
A little trip to the hobby shop, three small bottles of the appropriate colors of paint, and the dredging up of some long-lost skill, and there is a lovely weathered barn (which no farmer in his right mind would ever use—but that’s another story).
All that useless education did come in handy!
Surprisingly, even algebra came into play recently with calculating the pitch of the dock roof. That Pythagorean Theorem? It does have it’s uses.
(I have an amusing story about the Pythagorean Theorem and my undergraduate days, but you have to hear it out loud for it to make any sense. Totally useless as blog material.)
But, my tip today is to remember that knowledge is never wasted. It just may take decades to figure out where to apply it.
Keep your notes.
* MotH = Man of the House
