Take an educational ride on the L

Long has America been on the road for a better source of alternative education. This task is quite difficult due to the large variability across students, though students definitely have one thing in common: We may very well be coined “Generation L.”

The L, of course, stands for lazy. Human nature entails we organize our life by proximity — what is close is what is easy and what is easy is what is good.

Getting yourself out of the familiar is severely lacking in the student’s life — and all levels of education, especially those before college, do a terrible job of forcing you outside of your comfort zone.

There are few places you learn more about life than while riding public transportation. Changing it up and going somewhere on public transportation should be required education.

Like that archetypal kid with her iPod headphones plugged in, there is no end to what gets tuned out without novel experiences like public transportation. Without listening, there are so many things you will not learn.

This call to learn something new is the same as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau’s plea to escape into nature. The only difference is I am asking you to escape on the nearest public transportation service. In our case, that is the Chicago Transit Authority.

And when you think about it, the CTA is not all that different than Walden Pond: You are left alone to your thoughts (minus that kid who has her speakers so loud that you too are listening to her music), nothing around you looks like it has been cleaned by a human being and man oh man is it a jungle out there.

You try to get on the Metra and pay the student price, only to discover that you are in college now, too old for a free or even discounted ride in life.

You creepily listen in on people’s conversations and hear them say such nuggets of wisdom as “It’s hard to know where you’re going until you get there,” or “If you can learn so much when you’re lost, just imagine what you’ll figure out when you know where you’re going.” Then you can record these comments in a column.

You hear yet another person, this time a young boy listening to Miley Cyrus' “Party in the U.S.A” and realize how much that song sucks.

In addition to seeing the more concrete side of life that abstract textbooks can’t quite teach, putting oneself in the periodic stressful situation has its benefits.

Dealing with the occasional stressful situation does increase your quality of work and efficiency, according to a 2004 University of Central Michigan study published in Social Indicators Research. Like many other works, the study concluded chronic stress is harmful, but novel situations still lead to novel solutions. If this works in the office, it should work in the classroom.

So, Mr. Obama, I think I found your “public option.”

Medill freshman Sam Block can be reached at samuelblock2013@u.northwestern.edu.