I’ve learned the fundamentals of physics, integral calculus, the theory behind computer operating systems, the evolution of humans, the mathematics necessary to generate computer graphics, and almost the entire history of Europe. But there’s an important thing that college never taught me.

Most college professors you will learn from have average or below teaching skills. What separates a great professor from the rest is the ability to take an advanced concept and condense it into something more easily digested. In other words, they’re great communicators. Unfortunately, since most professors you will have aren’t great, most of the things you will learn in college aren’t that great either. At least, most of what you learn won’t be learned to a great extent unless you go the extra mile. And if you haven’t learned something to a great extent, there’s a good chance you can’t explain it better than your not-so-great professor. His failure to communicate has become yours, which is unfortunate because there’s an art in explaining something about another world so simply that even a five-year-old could understand it.

A few days ago, I told a buddy of mine that I’d stayed up until three in the morning finishing up an assignment. He asked why. I tried to explain how the API our teacher told us to use inherently operates at a lower level and that the programming language we were using to access it is more abstract, which opens up room for error on both ends. I figured by the look in his eye that he was confused and was sure of it when he admitted he was not in the same major as me. But there should never be a prerequisite for communicating something to someone. Even if my friend was the most distinguished computer scientist in the world, I should have just said, “My teacher gave me a screwdriver to hammer in a nail.”

And that’s an important thing that college never taught me.