Far East Movement came to our school tonight.  They were really good.  After the concert, they were signing autographs and thanking everyone for coming out.  James Roh complimented my shirt.  What a nice bunch of people. 

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I tried out for club volleyball and made the team.  But I sprained my left wrist in China last month, and yesterday after the first practice, I sprained my right one.  I think I might buy a bulk order of athletic tape. 

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For some reason, I remembered a childhood memory today.  I was with some family friends and standing next to the microwave.  One of the kids said, “Don’t stand too close, because there’s radiation coming out of there.”  And a parent complimented him for being a smart boy. 

I think back to that moment and wonder, “Was he really ‘smart’, or was he just repeating something that his mother probably told him?” 

At Hopkins, there are a lot of these these ‘smart’ kids.  I just looked up the definition of “intelligence”: The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.  It’s kind of a shame that for most of our classes, all our acquired knowledge from lectures and homework can only be applied in three midterms and a final. Good job, higher level education. 

So I think there’s something deeper to all of this, and I’m completely missing it.  Maybe the real knowledge is something that can’t be taught in school, but we need school to help us learn it. 

Things like learning how to work together with a friend to solve a few problems, and also learning how to build a relationship with them.  Things like learning how to talk to distinguished individuals like professors and graduate students during their office hours.  Things like learning more about yourself, and the ways that you personally deal with pressure, time management, and learning.  And personally for me, things like learning more about God, and experiencing Him everyday at school to see where He wants me to take the next step. 

I think those are things that can be definitely applied in the future, in any situation and at any moment of life.  But they’re hard to master and often overlooked because we take a lot of things for granted. 

Lessons beyond school.  That’s what it should be about.