It's a question that I had grappled with continuously throughout my time in college. Being so much more engaged in my design and engineering coursework, I would put quite literally anything before getting around to writing papers. Time and time again, I could be found hunched over a desk in a study carrel the night before a due date, hastily spilling the contents of my exhausted brain into barely conceivable, double-spaced lines.
As I've gotten older, the animosity I had for the "liberal arts" side of my education has ebbed and transitioned into something more akin to reluctant gratitude. I've found that the act of writing is an opportunity to make sense of the vast amount of disparate information we take in on a daily basis. In a world that spins ever faster and with vast oceans of information at our fingertips, writing requires us to clear our minds for a brief moment and try to connect the dots.
A Sensei of mine from years past used to say that "you don't really know something until you have to teach it", underscoring that earning a black belt is not the end of learning, but rather the beginning. I've found that writing functions much the same way. In this spirit, I am kicking off a personal campaign to write more - to make sense of what inspires me, puzzles me, and challenges me. To learn...and hopefully, at least a little...to teach.