Learning Beyond the Answer

One of my professors once asked me what a value in a table meant. As I remember it, we were looking at coefficients and how variables related to an outcome. I tried to explain it, but I couldn't quite get the thought out.

It took me a while, and I still got it wrong. But he encouraged the attempt. I came away feeling that he appreciated my trying to work through it, even though I hadn't arrived at the right explanation.

That reaction stayed with me. There was something useful in the attempt itself. Trying to explain the value made the limits of my understanding visible. I could look at the table, but I couldn't yet turn what I was looking at into a clear thought.

This professor allows AI on a project worth a substantial part of our final grade. He also keeps asking us to explain things intuitively. I used to hear the second part mostly as something annoying. I am beginning to think the two belong together.

He knows these tools exist. He knows people are using them. But he still wants to know whether we understand what we are saying. Looking back at that table, I can see why. An answer can be available to me before its meaning is.

I have been frustrated with college lately, including my own business management degree. I want to make things, try things, and find out why they fail. Sometimes the distance between that and completing another requirement feels enormous. We spend years earning the credential that is supposed to make people take us seriously. I keep wondering what kind of understanding we are acquiring along the way.

The cost makes that question harder to ignore. If education can require years of work and a serious amount of debt, I want more from it than evidence that someone followed the instructions. I want to come out more curious and more capable of figuring things out. Otherwise, what exactly was the education for?

Some of this frustration comes from looking around a lecture room. I see phones and computers, and I find myself feeling bad for the professor trying to get people interested. There are times when almost nobody seems to ask a question. I cannot know what every person is doing or thinking, but I recognize the feeling of a room waiting for something to be over.

Then I remember that I joined in when people complained about the professor who keeps asking us to understand things intuitively. I cannot complain that college fails to make us think and dismiss a professor for trying to do exactly that. At least, I need to look more closely at what I have been dismissing.

I use AI, and I am excited by what it makes possible. I do not think using it settles whether someone has learned anything. It might help someone understand a problem, or it might help them get past the problem without understanding it. The final submission could look impressive in either case. What interests me is the difference between those experiences.

What mattered to me in that exchange was the combination: he asked me to explain, and his response made the unsuccessful attempt feel worth making. If I want to understand things, I have to be able to spend some time in that unfinished state. Otherwise, I am asking to learn without ever having to encounter what I don't understand.

That is part of why engineering appeals to me. I associate it with having to understand how things fit together. If something fails, there is a reason, and figuring out that reason matters. I want more of that contact with the thing being studied. Even in business, trying to make something work and discovering why it does not seems more compelling to me than learning how to describe a business from a distance.

I am also becoming more interested in philosophy. That might sound like a different direction, but the attraction is similar: I want to ask better questions. If producing information and executing an idea become easier, deciding what to ask and what an answer means seems increasingly important. I think creativity and original thought will matter more. I am less convinced that the habits we develop in school are preparing us for that.

I do not mean that curiosity appears just because someone tells us to be curious. My dad has spent a lot of time trying to get me to open my mind and ask questions. It has not always come naturally to me. That makes me hesitate when I talk as if everyone else is asleep and I am the only person paying attention. I have needed people to push me too.

What I want from education is becoming clearer than what I think should change about it. I want to understand the systems I use. I want to be able to ask why something works and keep going when the first explanation does not make sense. I want access to powerful tools without losing the desire to figure things out myself.

Maybe that is why I keep returning to this professor. He allows the tool and still asks us to explain. I didn't leave that exchange with a perfect answer. I left feeling encouraged to keep trying. I am beginning to wonder whether the part I found annoying is the part of the education I most need.