You'll probably never use this, but learn it anyhow

I was fine with algebra and OK with geometry, but trigonometry broke my spirit. I asked the teacher why we needed to learn about cosines and secants and whatnot. He said if we went further in math we'd need it. I said: "I will take a sacred oath never to study any college subject that requires trig." He laughed.

My father said that if I were in training to be an artillery officer, I'd need trig to aim the guns, and if I couldn't do it I'd flunk out and have to be a private. "It's bad enough being an officer," he said. (But it's a lot better to be in the artillery than the infantry.)

I majored in English and Creative Writing in college, and did not serve in the Army.

"When am I ever going to use this?" is a common question, writes Brett Benson on SoL in the Wild. He gives his students an honest answer. You probably won't. You won't be measuring the height of flagpoles by their shadow or separating the anapests from the dactyls.

But, "learning content, whether it’s history, math, geography, literature, or science, builds the mind you’ll use in every area of life," he writes. "Knowledge gives you more examples to draw from, more context to understand new information, and more mental efficiency because your working memory doesn’t have to do everything from scratch."

Students who know more read better, decide better, solve better, and understand more. That’s especially true when life gets complex or unfamiliar, which, for most adults, is often.

Shared knowledge "lets people make sense of the world together," he tells students. Cultural literacy "helps you understand news, conversations, arguments, and events happening around you. You use that every day, even if you don’t notice it.” Learning "strengthens your mind and . . . helps you participate in the world with everyone else."

I'm not sure this applies to logarithms or the Krebs Cycle, though the latter did answer a crossword clue just the other day. But I have found that knowing things makes it a lot easier to understand new things.