*This column originally was printed in the Monday Feb. 29 edition of The Daily Eastern News

Education is not just about acquiring knowledge and being able to deploy what you learned in your everyday life.
It’s a much more in depth process that typically starts with a question.

Before we can even begin to learn and gain valuable knowledge, we ask questions. How does this work? What does that do? Why does it do that? You get the idea.

Those questions serve as a gateway to learning and everyone has the right to raise their hand and ask a question whether it be about a math problem or the budget impasse.

Unfortunately, there is no better learning opportunity than the depressing budget impasse that has plagued this state and starved public universities for far too long.

It’s a learning opportunity because many students who I’ve encountered over the weeks don’t have the slightest idea as to what the budget crisis is and how it affects our school.

In this situation, since our futures are at stake because selfish politicians are only concerned with passing their own agendas, it is crucial for students to ask questions that revolve around their future at Eastern and the future of the school as a whole.

I always encourage my peers to ask the pressing questions and if you do not get the answer you are searching for then ask again and again until you do.

Do not let the pitiful fear of offending an individual put an end to your inquiry. You have a right to know what is unfolding at your school and in the state; after all you are a taxpayer, voter (well most of us), and you pay tuition or some sort of fee that feeds to the school.

However, there is always that one fool who succeeds at making a mockery of the rest of us by asking uneducated, time wasting questions that could have been answered if the said fool would have did his research.

It isn’t hard but time and time again laziness seems to get the better of us and instead of building our background knowledge on facts and valuable snippets of information that help us cultivate these esteemed and articulate questions we tend to follow rumors or what he said or what she said because it’s easier than saying “hey Siri what’s going on in the State of Illinois.”

I’m not saying that is the only form of research method; there are plenty of others like the ancient library or nearly extinct newspapers our parents and professors once used.

There’s another thought, you could also ask your professors, I’m sure they ought to know something.

You could even search through the bowels of Google to find what you need to know in lieu of toys or hover boards or whatever it is college students look up but don’t really need.

My point is would it honestly break your fingers and blind you forever if you picked up a newspaper or Googled information that you heard in order to verify it so you don’t sound like a blabbering moron and make the rest of us look bad?

Ask questions and don’t be afraid to do so. The only way you look dumb if you ask a question is if you didn’t do the prior reading before hand.

Analicia Haynes is a freshman journalism major. She can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].