How to Be Smarter Right Now
--
My 12 year old daughter recently introduced me to the television show The Office (the U.S.version). Apparently, every 12 year old in this country has binge watched it. As a matter of fact, most 12 year olds binge watch most of the programming they absorb.
But it’s not just 12 year olds who do this binge-watching thing; my mother, who is just a tad south of 70 years old, does the same thing!
It makes sense…I mean, why wait? Waiting is overrated today, simply because you don’t really have to do much of it. Regrettably, I have started to hear myself say things to my daughter that begin with “when I was your age” and end with “five channels” and “we had to wait until next week or, OMG, next season to see what happened!!!” It is the Gen X version of having to walk three miles to school in the snow, barefoot, blah, blah, blah.
The people complaining about all the “young people” staring at their myriad screens while mindlessly bingeing on Netflix, YouTube, and TikTok (like those of us old people actually know what TikTok is), can learn a lesson from these youngsters and their seemingly wasteful behavior.
With all the technology and information we have today, are you aware that you can literally learn ANYTHING at ANYTIME, often for free or very little money? It used to be (“when I was growing up…”) that you had to go back to school and get another piece of paper that would cost you more money than it would ever be possible to make simply because you had that piece of paper! But now that enough intelligent people have caught on to that ruse, enter binge learning!
“I’m still learning.” –Michelangelo
Urban Dictionary defines binge learning as:
A tendency to partake in bouts of knowledge-seeking; An almost obsessive “indulge(nce) (of) an interest”(Eli Dourado, “‘Binge Learning’ is Online Education’s Killer App”). This is often within a field in which one already had a strong interest, but may also include seemingly random facts or topics. Can take the form of watching a collection of videos, tutorials, seminars, listening to podcasts, or just browsing Wikipedia or Google Dictionary (now the ‘define’ keyword). Has some similarities to binge watching.
