Sustaining the love for learning

In college and in high school, teachers and administrators often speak of fostering a love for learning. Beyond the grades, test scores, and accomplishments, students are encouraged to consider how they can change as scholars and as people by the things they learn. A love for learning is inherently intangible; there is little that can be done to measure it or to bottle and serve it. It must come from within, but for those who find it, the rewards can be plentiful: passion, perseverance, and even the success that follows.

Perhaps one of the most difficult adjustments from college to the working world is a shift from working for yourself to working for The Man. Gone are the days when you set goals for yourself and molded your effort and expectations accordingly; instead, you are forced into tasks, deadlines, and evaluations that are created by an entity above you. It's worse than being subject to the occasionally arbitrary nature of grades - now, almost everything you do can seem arbitrary or imposed.

Suddenly, all thoughts about loving learning seem distant. No matter how much you learn - and you will likely learn a lot - it may feel like you are doing it for the paycheck and for the career advancement. Looked at one way, every job is simply a stepping stone to the next.

Not only can this be extremely frustrating, but it can also be self-defeating. In your focus on tangible success, which is generally only evident through infrequent performance reviews and/or raises, you may find yourself doing not what is right for the product or the client, but you think is right for you.

Of course, if you stop and think about it, is that in fact right for you? Liberal arts curricula are based on the idea that the tools you acquire, the way you learn to think - that is the most important asset an institution of higher learning can bestow upon you. Can something similar be said about your career and the jobs along the way?

I don't know the answer to that question. What I do know, however, is that the times that I've felt most enthused about my job and my career is when I've learned something new, gleaned an insight that I did not anticipate, or otherwise added something to my mental toolkit. At the end of the day, learning is fun; just like a two-year-old is overjoyed by stacking blocks successfully, piecing together the puzzles that we encounter day-to-day can give us a sense of accomplishment that is very fulfilling.

So what does this mean for our careers? It seems to be important to seek out positions and roles that challenge us in ways that enable us to think and learn about issues that are important to us. Don't choose the job that you can do easily or the one that will be nearly impossible; find one that builds off of your expertise but that will force you to stretch your faculties. If you can reintroduce that little bit of intellectual stimulation in your job, I think you'll find that working for The Man won't seem quite as tedious. And, in the course of rediscovering a love for learning, you may find a way to do what's right for both you and your organization.

Inspiration for this post came from Chris Nikoloff, current Head of School at The Harker School in San Jose, Calif.