In my organic chemistry class in college, at the end of a lecture, one of my classmates raised his hand and asked, “So how can this be used? What are the applications?”

Looking back, I don’t remember what reaction or chemistry phenomenon he was referring to, but the professor furrowed his rather bushy white eyebrows and said, “Isn’t it enough to understand it and appreciate how amazing this is? Does it need to have a marketable application to be worth studying? You need to learn how to take joy in simply learning something.”

There is nothing at all wrong with using science to inform the latest technologies, market them, and make a buck, but surely knowledge is not merely a stepping stone to a mountain of money. There is joy to be had in learning in and of itself.

Here is my doodle-y representation of the joy of learning: