Intellectual curiosity is the true barometer; you either thirst to know more, or you’re content with ignorance.
There is a third way!
You thirst to know more but have a soul crushing deficit of self esteem and truly believe you’re incapable of anything more than menial labor. You remain with your thirst, not content with your ignorance, but unable to overcome the self image of “absolute moron with no place in the scientific community who must be narcissistic for even thinking he could be” and so you grow to hate yourself even more because of it!
…Err… Or so my friend says.
You don’t have to go to higher education to pursue knowledge! We have more knowledge available to us freely than any other time on Earth!
And for that matter, you don’t even have to pursue knowledge that will help you make money!
Taking a deep dive in some hobbies using free knowledge could very well enhance your life better than getting the masters degree and the promotion.
Eventually you realize you forget almost as much as you learn, it’s like a bilge pump in a sinking boat. Then you focus on what you want to remember and come to acceptance with that.
You have to keep going through rehearsal of that old information to keep it from fading. The hard part is stacking new layers on the old layers.
I know way too much about the bronze age and not in a haha Ea-Nasir way but in a I have the major trade routes of the era memorized sort of way. The only official education I have is a high school diploma that even then I probably shouldn’t have gotten since I failed math outright.
