Is There Too Much To Learn?

Summary: The letter came late Monday evening and I didn’t see it until Tuesday morning. “Dear Mr. Charles Letbetter, I am pleased to offer you admission…” Despite several challenges and questions, anxiety and worries, I’ve been given permission to continue learning, filling my head with a level of knowledge substantially greater than what I currently possess. I am both excited and frightened by the prospects. Almost immediately after sharing the news on social media, someone responded something to the effect, “Goes to prove you’re never too old to learn.” While I would agree that age should never be a factor in deciding whether to continue one’s education, there remains a point where one is challenged to confront the limits of one’s mind. Is there a ceiling, a limit, on what a given mind can learn? Obviously, our instinctive response is that no, we continue learning our entire lives and there is always something new, some recent piece of information that we need to know in order to function in our society. Limits on learning do not and cannot exist. Given what we know about the <a href="https://www.oldmantalking.xyz/i-forgot-what-i-came-here-for/">limits of memory</a>, however, it seems logical to me that there would be a top-end to how much one person can actually learn beyond short-term rote memorization. Passing a test has never been a sufficient measure for how much information one actually retains at a level necessary for application. How much useable knowledge can our brains store? This question worries me as I consider going back to school. What professors ask of students is a depth of understanding, and the ability to communicate that comprehension sufficiently, at levels I’ve not had to produce in over 40 years. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever faced an education challenge as steep as what sits before me. Are there pre-existing boundaries to what I can achieve? I need to know. Learning is easy until it isn’t When I consider whether there are limits on my ability to learn, looking at the topic strictly from a personal perspective without any generalizations outside my own experience, there are both reasons to be encouraged and reasons to be concerned. I have two examples and both, interestingly enough, involve creative software. The first is WordPress, the online platform that not only serves as the foundation for all my websites, but those of many others including <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/">The New Yorker</a>, <a href="https://www.bbcamerica.com/">BBC America</a>, and <a href="https://www.sonymusic.com/">Sony Music</a>. WordPress issued a significant upgrade this past week, which can be a nightmare for heavily customized websites. Changes in the core software create new ways of doing basic functions, often re-writing existing pieces of code in order to extend what can be done, or create security limitations. The core also provides new functionality so that websites can do more while running efficiently. The larger one’s website is, the more critical these changes become. Sitting on top of the WordPress core are these third-party pieces of software called plugins. Plugins provide specific functionality by making calls back to the WordPress core. For example, the ability to include audio on this page requires a plugin. The ability to share the content of this page on social media requires a separate plugin. Even how the page layout is constructed relies on plugins. With so many different plugins, it is easy to see how changes to the core can cause a lot of work for the people who write software. Updating plugins can be tricky. Smaller plugins,

Is There Too Much To Learn?

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