Something My Alabama Teachers Should Have Taught Me

We're happy to introduce one of our newest contributors at Townsquare Media Tuscaloosa, Mike McKenzie.

Are you ready for a trip back to school? Well, kind of.

The Stuff We “Never Use” — And Why It Might Be the Most Important Thing We Learned

By Mike McKenzie

We’ve all said it. Usually laughing. Sometimes with a little bitterness.

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“When am I ever gonna use this?”

It’s the universal response to high school algebra, chemistry, Shakespeare, or anything involving a periodic table. I’ve said it myself many times, usually while staring at a worksheet and wondering how knowing the atomic weight of boron was going to help me pay rent.

For the record, it didn’t.
And I barely survived chemistry anyway. I escaped high school science with a proud, hard-earned D-minus.

But here’s the thing we miss when we joke about it.

Education was never really about the data. It wasn’t about memorizing dates, formulas, or the number of protons floating around boron. It was about something much sneakier—and much more useful.

It was about teaching us how to think.

When education is done right—especially when it leans into something like the Socratic Method, it’s not trying to turn you into a walking encyclopedia. It’s trying to train your brain to ask better questions, spot bad assumptions, connect dots, and make wise decisions when the answers aren’t obvious.

That’s critical thinking. And that’s the real curriculum.

Math isn’t about numbers –it’s about logic. Science isn’t about facts—it’s about curiosity and cause-and-effect. The humanities aren’t about dead poets—they’re about empathy, perspective, and understanding human behavior. The arts teach interpretation. History teaches consequences. Even chemistry—the class I nearly flunked—taught me something valuable: process. Hypothesis. Experiment. Results. Adjust.

I don’t balance equations for a living. I talk into a microphone.
But every day, I evaluate information, weigh outcomes, read a room, question motives, and try to make choices that don’t blow up spectacularly.

That’s education at work.

We live in a world drowning in information. Raw data is everywhere—Google will hand it to you in half a second. What’s rare now isn’t knowledge. It’s judgment.

The ability to think critically.
To separate the signal from the noise.
To pause before reacting.
To recognize when something sounds convincing but doesn’t actually make sense.

That’s what school was supposed to give us.

So no, I don’t use the atomic weight of boron. But I’m better for having wrestled with it.

Education isn’t a toolbox full of facts you carry forever. It’s fuel for an analytical existence.

And even if you never use the answers, you’re using the thinking every single day.