As I was sitting in Senior Language and Composition, I was asked the question by my teacher, Jarrett Lundquist, “What is education about?” Of course, being in the United States school system for almost 13 years, one would think I would know the answer to that question. I didn’t though, and had to stop and think for a while.

Starting at the beginning of high school, or for some of us at the end of middle school, our teachers, counselors, parents and advisers tell us we need to build ourselves up and make an impressive resume. They tell us to read this, to write this, to eat this, to not look around, to take this, to score this and, after all of that, you earn a diploma.

Looking at that, school is almost like a job. We go to school, study, take tests and try to get the grades we need to graduate and to get into college. The next day, we repeat.

Is that what education is really about? I don’t think so. I think education is about, in a way, becoming Renaissance men and women. I think school is about learning, not acing a test. I think school is about learning about what the world has to offer, and what it can do to you. I think education is about growing our minds academically and helping us see the other side.

Education shouldn’t feel like a job, and that job should not be about getting the A; rather, it should be about obtaining information and really understanding it. I can honestly say I have had experiences when I could not tell you what I learned in a class after I took the test because I was more worried about getting the grade so that I was “successful”.

Look at education as a chance to become educated; not educated in how to build yourself up for college or graduation, but rather educated to where you can have conversations about different subjects, problems and triumphs.

Andrew Carnegie, father of the steel industry and philanthropist, said that in the first third of your life you should obtain as much education as possible. Think of education as a chance to grow as a person and as someone who can know about more than two subjects. Education is the gateway for greatness. Not greatness in which you earned a 4.0 GPA and scored a 29 on your ACT because you studied so hard, but a greatness where you can understand how we, as humans, work and how the world works.

So you may not be finding “y” in your daily life like you might in math, but you can say that you know how to because you learned how to problem solve in math. You may not become a scientist in the future, but you will be able to understand why that object moved the way it did or why certain elements make up your house.

You may think you know the English language, but there is always room for improvement to understand the language in greater detail. You may think history is boring and wonder why we study dead people, but those people made today’s world possible. Even though they are not alive today, they must mean something if we still talk about them, right?

Education shouldn’t feel like a job; it should feel like a chance to better yourself: a way to discover you. To discover who you are and what makes you think—that is education.

Next time you ask, “When am I going to use this in my life?” just remember, it may not be the concept, but instead the skills you learned from it that you will use in your life.

So go to class, have an open-mind and learn as much as you possibly can because that’s what education is about: learning, not acing every test.

Pete Makarov is the Editor in Chief- Online