What makes learning boring

One obvious way learning becomes boring is if you are forced to do it. Whether it be by parents or society being forced to do something, as opposed to choosing to, typically makes the individual less likely for success.

Perhaps trying to figure out what makes learning fun is too difficult. Maybe there is no cut and dry, clear-cut answer. Either way, identifying what factors can make learning boring will be helpful. Could be that learning certain things is boring, no matter what, and that that is OK!

Whether it be fun or boring, for the purposes of this book our focus is on what makes it successful amongst peers.

Within that idea I would like to briefly describe what David Foster Wallace's posthumous novel The Pale King had to say on boredom (spoiler alert). Early on as Sylvanshine, a high-level assistant within the IRS, is sitting on a plane we are treated to his stream-of-consciousness as he goes from fact-to-unrelated-fact (we later discover he is a fact psychic) spending a lot of time saying how much difficulty he has passing the CPA and the amusement that gives his colleagues. Succinctly, the narrator confides “What you pay attention to is the whole ball game in the CPA and in life.” This idea percolates throughout the novel and comes out the end in the author's note's section with DFW's idea that if you can handle boredom you can do anything in modern life. This is related to a scene at a college accounting class where the character narrating at the time hears that “in modern life there are no new worlds to discover or battles to be fought. Now it is time to account, and accounting is boring, and because of that those who can do it are heroes.”

For context, Pale King is set on a day in 1985 at an Internal Revenue Service facility in Peoria, Illinois. In my mind, there are not too many more boring things in life than taxes and accounting. Yet, they are both invaluable parts of American society, without them it would not be going too far to say that our society would collapse.

OK, so accounting is boring and important. How does fun play into that? Certainly there are some people born to be star IRS employees, for them, perhaps studying accounting is fun and therefore easy, or if not easy the challenge is part of the joy.

What about others, like me? I recognize the value of accounting and want to learn it, but in my summer course on Managerial Accounting I got a D and am headed on the same track this term with Financial Accounting. Why is it that I am loathe to do the work?

Part of it is a lack of consequence for doing badly. I have already completed a bachelors degree, and while a CPA would be an invaluable feather in my cap, it is not necessary for employment, nor societal respect. Furthermore I am not paying for the courses myself, so I lack “skin in the game” if you will. Additionally I'm not a full-time student and have a life (i.e. work, friends, family, etc.) which kept me busier than I could keep up with before I even began my CPA quest.

What am I trying to say by complaining and giving a lack of excuses? I'm trying to figure out why time and again I chose to invest my time in alternative pursuits, and not do my accounting homework. Its boring, yes. I felt I could get an A with very minimal effort, yes. Its too hard for me, I do not believe so but that is what the results indicate.

So then what, I'm lazy and dumb? Perhaps, but maybe also I have not had the proper drive/hunger to complete this quest. I can access the material, most of my exam grades have been B's and C's (plus I got an A in Intro to Accounting at The University of Chicago), yet …

So, maybe accounting is boring because I cannot just sit down and do it, like I can with writing or coding HTML. To successfully study accounting I, believe I, need to give it my full attention, on a daily (or at least 5X/weekly) basis.

Maybe there could be some sort of graph with difficulty on one axis and attention-ability on another. Topics (i.e. Accounting, Skateboarding, etc.)

→ Bad consequences of school not being fun? → Why does society expect school to educate its citizens and then blame them for the results? → Why can't people be expected to educate themselves?