I've been taking medical and biology related courses for the last five years or so, well over 1000 hours in lecture hours thus far - thanks to the Internet (a c

I've been taking medical and biology related courses for the last five years or so, well over 1000 hours in lecture hours thus far - thanks to the Internet (a counterpoint to the "I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore" thread popular on HN right now). I concluded that while I find it all extremely interesting and exciting as far as anatomy, physiology, neuroscience, organic and biochemistry, genetics, statistics (which I had learned - and forgotten - before but now I actually found useful and therefore interesting for the first time), etc., I could never study medicine to become a doctor. All that rote learning! For a CS graduate, it's like learning everything there is about Oracle 9i. For years. By heart. Not even about databases in general, you learn the basics of course, but then you spend most of your time learning by heart every command and every setting of Oracle 9i. I'm sure it makes you an efficient doctor within the given system, and when trying to solve some example cases there sure is value in knowing pathways (real ones, e.g. neurological ones - where is the damage if the patient feels this and does not feel any of that?, as well as biochemical ones, but also organizational stuff like various ways invented to categorize broken bones, e.g. http://www.thieme.com/media/samples/pubid1252333231.pdf http://www.thieme.com/media/samples/pubid1252333231.pdf). Quite frankly, I find most of it a waste of time. Right now I'm re-taking edX "Principles of Biochemistry" (https://www.edx.org/course/principles-biochemistry-harvardx-mcb63x-1 https://www.edx.org/course/principles-biochemistry-harvardx-...), and while it's a lot of fun I also feel it's quite a bit of a waste: From part III on it feels more and more useless. The course is done very well, and every bit is interesting, but how - WHY - am I supposed to learn soooo many paths in such great detail? What's the point? If I need it I can always look it up! No wonder that while there are several "Hello I'm new here, excited to start this course" messages in the forum every day there are only a handful of forum messages for the later sections of the course - after many months of running. I suspect >90% of people never get past part 3 (of 5). Because the brain just does not see the point of all this rote learning. If there was a larger project as context, a problem to solve! But just "here learn this" for no other reason than "it's interesting" (so are a trillion other pieces of information!!)... it does not work very well. Learning needs both a PUSH and a PULL. The teaching is mostly about push(ing knowledge into brains), but where is the pull (reasons other than abstract "you need to know")? Brain have their own ways of detecting actual need, and that comes from having to solve actual problems, not from being told "this is important". And learning millions of facts when you don't need them but know you can always learn them/look them up quickly at any time when you do actually need them is soooo demotivating.