Have you ever thought about life after college—not the planning for a career or deciding to take the LSAT or GRE, but the life aspect of living beyond college. Being in Washington, DC has given me a glance at that life. As someone who has defined a lot of my life by academia, to come to DC where academia is melded to experience and social life has meant a fundamental shift in how I think about learning. 

It started with my internship at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. The weekly meetings with my supervisor consisted of 25% serious discussion of my work for the week and the rest ponderings of different aspects of folklore. Every conversation could turn into a research idea—idiomatic expressions, myths surrounding historical figures. I learned more about the myths about Freddie Mercury from my supervisor and the debate of whether Bohemian Rhapsody counts as folklife than from academic journal articles written on the impact of music. That perspective then moved beyond the realm of my internship. 

The world became something to be curious about whether it was walking through Annapolis on a spur of the moment tag along or learning to cook for more than one person. There is a sense of fulfillment that comes from the experience of existing with people without the pressure to stick my nose in a book or the overarching stress of impending coursework. I always used to phrase ‘I want to define myself outside of academia’ when I talked about what I was doing Next in the SLUS class. That does not mean I’m ending my curiosity about the world but expanding that curiosity beyond the realm of JSTOR articles and primary sources. Sometimes it looks like having a conversation about cars—how to make them go faster, the pros and cons of rear view cameras—or finding a new commonality with someone. Five weeks into the program I learned that one housemate also spoke French. It was the motivation and accountability I needed to dive back into learning the language again. Other times, curiosity comes from Googling a recipe or figuring out how to fix a small thing. I even forgo the Google search to ask the hivemind of the house. This shift from book learning to life learning makes each piece of information I carry personal. There’s an attachment to what I learn or what I read all because it is tied to the conversations I’ve had and the people I’ve interacted with. Life is not all about the specific pieces of coursework we complete, but it is about what pieces we take with us and the curiosity that remains omnipresent.