My eldest brought home a backpack full of notebooks with the weekend homework of “study”.

I remember being in school where “study” was something that was done before a test.

Here at home we do other sorts of studying. I am currently studying plant identification. Not for a test, but as a study. As I walk through the streets of our neighborhood, the playground, our backyard. I look at the plants and I practice my vocabulary. Herbaceous. Woody. Growth habit. Creeping. Mounding. Runners. Low and spreading. Die back. Out-competing. I recognize plants at different stages of growth. I spot a wild legume that fixes nitrogen in the soil and I recall that when it is prolific it can signal that soil is poor in nitrogen. Nature’s balancer. I take cuttings of plants inside and let them sit in water to see which cuttings take root and which do not. I take cuttings and put them in soil to see which cuttings take root and which do not. Not because I am studying a certain plant, but because I cannot find that information, and I am driven by curiosity and studying.. True studying.. Sometimes extends past the information that you can find in a book into the information that you can find in life.

Studying is habitually accessing and using information. When information comes slowly or you can’t quite remember a detail you look it up again and you practice until you speak the language fluently.

Not because of a test. Because of mastery. Because you want to be certain of the things that you are learning.

The act of studying is the act of learning. Of self-testing. Of questioning our own memory. Of applying. Of drawing comparisons and connections. Of motivation.