I Am Assigning Myself Homework
On recovering curiosity by assigning myself homework.
È dentro noi un fanciullino che non solo ha brividi […] ma lagrime ancora e tripudi suoi.
Quando la nostra età è tuttavia tenera, egli confonde la sua voce con la nostra, e dei due fanciulli che ruzzano e contendono tra loro, e, insieme sempre, temono sperano godono piangono, si sente un palpito solo, uno strillare e un guaire solo. Ma quindi noi cresciamo, ed egli resta piccolo; noi accendiamo negli occhi un nuovo desiderare, ed egli vi tiene fissa la sua antica serena maraviglia.
— Giovanni Pascoli, Il fanciullino
Recently, Giovanni Pascoli, a poet from my high school Italian literature syllabus, came to mind. Pascoli wrote about il fanciullino, the inner child that experiences the world with wonder. As we grow older, his voice becomes harder to hear, but does not disappear. Perhaps, it is simply drowned out by familiarity.
There are so many things around me that seem ordinary just because I’ve gotten used to them. I look into my bathroom mirror in the morning without questioning how it was made. Most forks have four prongs (actually, I just found out they are called tines), but I’m not too sure why. It’s not that I find these questions uninteresting (quite the opposite, actually). It’s just that I do not wake up most mornings wondering about the history of forks and there is no forcing function pushing me to learn about it.
As a child, school was constantly making me learn about things I had not chosen myself. On Monday, I might be reading about the Roman Empire. On Tuesday, I would be asked to explain photosynthesis. By Friday, I would be writing a report about Aristotle.
At the time, this did not always feel like a privilege. At the time, this did not always feel like a privilege. There were deadlines, grades and some pressure that came with every test and every assignment. But there was also something wonderful about being handed a subject and told “go learn enough about this and understand it well enough to explain it.”
You didn’t have to be already interested in the topic. Sometimes a topic was boring, and some other times it led down long rabbit holes. Either way, you would spend some time looking into something you would’ve otherwise walked straight past.
As an adult, I have a lot more freedom to decide what I learn, and yet, a much narrower syllabus. Without a teacher assigning the next chapter, I find it way too easy to remain inside the subjects I am already somewhat familiar with.
So I have decided to start assigning myself homework.
I want to pick questions and spend some time trying to answer them. Then, I want to write about what I learn. I am not trying to become the world’s leading authority on the history of forks. I’m just trying to understand a new topic well enough to write about it.
I want to publish my learnings even if they feel incomplete. Maybe, especially if they feel incomplete. Part of this experiment is exercising the muscle of finishing small things.
I want to spend more time being a beginner. I want to follow questions that are interesting without first requiring them to be important. I want to practice researching and explaining. And I would like to gradually build a small pile of things I once did not know.
Perhaps, somewhere in that process, I will get a little better at hearing il fanciullino again.
This post is, technically, the first assignment: a short essay on why I intend to write essays.
There will be no grades. There might, however, be stickers.
