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Questions (Not) Overheard at the Gym

Dr Ryan Messmore
Jan 23, 2016
2 min read

At this time of year, many people make New Year’s resolutions to hit the gym more regularly. ‘Tis also the season when many choose their higher education pathway. It’s funny, though, how you don’t often hear the same questions asked about gym exercises that you do uni courses. Students seem to choose their uni course based almost entirely on what job they want to pursue. They tend to take only subjects directly related to their preferred career. When faced with the opportunity to take a broader range of subjects—like geometry or music, for instance—the typical student responds, “When would I use that in my job?”

Yet we don’t seem to ask that sort of question in the gym. “Why are you lifting those pieces of metal? When will you ever need to do that in the workplace?” or “Why are you running on a conveyor belt that takes you nowhere? What job requires you to become good at that?”

In the gym, we intuit that some things are worth doing because of how they shape and affect us, even if they do not correspond directly to our jobs. Ironically, these activities can actually help us, indirectly, do better in our careers. This is because strength, stamina, and fitness in general are “transferable” goods—they are beneficial across different contexts. And they are just plain good. Why, then, do we encourage young people to study only university courses that correspond directly to a particular career? By doing so, they can miss the opportunity to develop transferable skills like critical thinking, effective writing, persuasive speaking and problem-solving. Such skills are valuable in almost any job context. In fact, in a 2013 survey, 93 percent of employers reported that “a demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than [a candidate’s] undergraduate major.” Moreover, like wisdom and discernment, these capacities are just plain good. The past five or six issues of The Pillar have attempted to explain why liberal arts subjects like logic, geometry, music, and astronomy are important disciplines to pursue at university. In other words, they’ve tried to show the tremendous benefit—humanly and occupationally—that’s possible if we can free ourselves from the utilitarian shackles of “When would I use that in my job?”