Knowledge for it's own sake

[ddubois]

When I was in high school, I enjoyed math, greatly. And I was very good at it, earning a 770 on my math SAT. When I went to college, I took a what now seems like a minimal number of math courses (given that I was a CS major), and the ones I took, I did as litle as possible to get by. Thus, I learned extremely little compared to what could have potentially been obtained. Amoung these classes, I vaguely recall taking a Numerical Analysis class and understanding precisely 0% of it. (That I passed is probably a sad commentary on the state of education.) This was over 10 years ago now.

Maybe I'm going through something of an early mid-life crisis, as I am having all sorts of nostalgiic, regretful thoughts and yearnings. Amoung these is the sense that I would have liked to have learned more math. Not because I perceive there to be much practical value in it (I know more than enough to do everything I need to do with regards to gaming, finance, work, etc) but just because I feel like I've lost some of my intelluctual self-esteem.

How strange/silly am I?

Anyways, one thought I had was that perhaps I could go sit in on some lectures 'on the sly' from the start of the semester without actually enrolling in any college courses. (I'm sure I could have gotten away with this in many of my lecture classes when I was in college.) Realistically however, it doesn't seem very plausible to commit weekly time out of my scehdule in such a manner given that I have job/wife/kids, and given that the practical motivation for doing this is absent. Another idea is that I could try to self-educate by, for instance, buying some text book, and just trying to plow through it. But I wouldn't suppose textbooks have gotten much more readily accessible over time, and again, there's no real driving factor to motivate me - it would probably be another book on my shelf that doesn't get read.

Have any of you ever had feelings similar to what I am describing? Did you ever resolve them?