Education is amazing. Its what creates you, its what exposes you. Through education, you realize your passion and calling. Its education that helps you form opinions about issues and people and things. True. All of that, and much more, is true.

But, what is education when you’re more stressed about getting that paper or that homework in, than actually enjoying what you’re studying and understanding. What is education when you care more about what your predicted grade in a particular subject is than what concept you aren’t able to get your head around?

Don’t get me wrong, I love education. I love studying. I love just knowing that rights and wrongs are social constructs made by society, I love understanding how different theatrical devices and ideas affect the audience of the piece, I love seeing how one color an author has used can say so much about his state of mind at that moment, I love learning a completely new language, I love making that connection between Donald Trump and Hitler and seeing why both of them are rising/rose to power and actually see history repeat itself (almost, hopefully not). I love studying.

But, I don’t see the purpose when I am stressed out enough to have a mental breakdown during class, or come home exhausted and have to face a huge workload that I need to submit in the next day. What is the point of all of this, when you’re going to reduce something as beautiful as knowledge and education to workload; reduce it to students comparing studying to stress; to the word ‘study’ having negative connotations in a student’s life.

And, don’t even get me started on exams. Exams are not to measure your success throughout the year and fathom what you’ve understood and learnt. If you ask an average student, exams is for that grade at the end with which they can apply to university or have a standing in the society. That grade is what defines a person in our lives nowadays. That success in anything and everything is what defines a person in this age and world. How wrong could we get? Are we trying to measure a person’s ability with the way he performs in maths, while his passion lies in dance? Are we saying that someone is incapable of doing anything just because he got a D in school? It’ll be this guy who will end up starting a million dollar company, and then we will use his example as inspiration.

I have one request from everyone around the world. Please do not reduce knowledge to something like exams and grades. Knowledge is a lot more profound and beautiful than a letter on a piece of paper.