I was told that I needed to learn math. I had to fight with a graphing calculator. I pretended to understand logarithms. “You will use this one day,” I was told.

Do you know who talks about Jane Austen or “Moby Dick” in everyday life? Not this person.

And that college degree? That thing I studied Intro to Logic, Econ 200, and Music 100 for? It got me a fancy piece of paper that I look at once a decade or so. You know, to make sure that five-figure document still exists.

Do you know what I really use every day? In every job I have had the last quarter of a decade?

A box cutter. I always need a box cutter.

(Also, in the “strange-but-true” category: You do not become proficient at crossword puzzles until you work in a grocery store. Go figure.)

So yes, school is good. Libraries are fantastic. But quite often, you just roll up your sleeves and do grunt work.