Are you a lifelong learner?

I am a lifelong learner. I have to be to do my job. Being a professor means having a body of knowledge and updating it so we can be experts.

In addition, I am a voracious reader of articles. Some of what I read is really lowbrow, like those emotional heartbreak stories with a missing ending on Facebook. Others are informative stories about current events. And I will read anything medical I can get my hands on, and that’s how I know the cyclospora epidemic started with Taylor Farms’ bagged iceberg lettuce.

I want to learn calculus, the one class I nearly failed in college. I want to learn molecular biology, because I think it’s amazing that complex life came from one-celled organisms and my cells reflect that. I’d like to learn carpentry because I think my mother wanted me to marry a carpenter (didn’t happen, even though I’ve known a lot of people who did carpentry).

I don’t understand people who don’t want to learn. Curiosity is an innate human trait in most people, and I think we need to ignore our better nature if we decide not to learn.