By Jamie Strickland
I recently came across a word I’d never heard before: philomath. I don’t exactly love how that rolls off the tongue, but I do love what it means. A philomath is someone who loves learning just for the sake of it, continues to study new things throughout their life and is always eager to know more.
A bit ironic that it has the word “math” in it, because math is one of the only things I don’t love learning. As far as I’m concerned, we can skip right over all the actual numbers and just tell me why they’re important and what they mean. That’s the interesting part.
Nevertheless, “I must be one of those,” I thought to myself when I looked up the word.
Does identifying myself as a philomath make me sound pretentious? I certainly hope not, because that’s not it at all. I just constantly crave new information. Maybe it’s because my brain gets bored easily and needs new stimulation to stay engaged.
Philomath is not to be confused with polymath, which is the word for a genius-like person who has mastered many different disciplines. That one certainly does not apply to me. I know a little bit about a lot of things, but I’m definitely not a master of any of them.
I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts and audiobooks and watching documentaries, usually while doing otherwise mundane tasks like driving or folding laundry. (Ugh, the laundry and the dishes – the banes of my existence.)
I love to travel, and before I visit somewhere new, I want to know as much as I can about it. I want to understand the culture, the geography, the history and what makes the place what it is. I don’t just want to see it, I want to know it.
It’s probably one of the reasons I became a journalist. Every story gives me an opportunity to learn something new and I’m constantly talking to people who know more than I do about something. I get to talk to interesting people for a living, and I never get tired of finding out something I didn’t know before.
I’m particularly excited that we have a new columnist in Johnston Now who writes about our hyperlocal history. I’ve learned something new from him every month he’s written for us so far, and I love that. There are so many fascinating stories about the place we live that I haven’t heard of yet.
That’s the best part of learning about history. There’s no better way to understand a place than to know what was here before you. The well never runs dry.
So, apparently, I’m a philomath. I’ll take that label and wear it with pride.
