How curiosity, chaos, and extremely niche internet rabbit holes quietly turned me into an unpaid academic weapon.
It always starts innocently. You open a new tab to look up one concept from class. One. Singular. Harmless. Fifteen minutes later, you are knee deep in seventeenth century shipwreck diagrams, the economic implications of medieval salt trade, a five part breakdown of why octopuses might be aliens, and a three hour video essay narrated by someone who sounds like they live inside a cardigan.
At this point, I am no longer studying. I am foraging.
Somewhere between lecture slides and late night scrolling on YouTube, Wikipedia, and Reels, my brain decided that traditional syllabi were optional but obscure niche knowledge was absolutely essential for survival. I might forget the exact wording of a definition from Module Four, but ask me about Victorian mourning jewellery, Icelandic naming conventions, or the engineering behind roller coasters and suddenly I am delivering TED Talks to unwilling friends.
This is not procrastination. This is interdisciplinary research with jazz hands.
Because while my semester insists I memorise neat bullet points, the internet offers messy, interconnected wonder. One hyperlink leads to another. One algorithmic nudge becomes a pilgrimage. One random curiosity mutates into a six hour intellectual buffet.
And honestly. My GPA might not reflect it yet, but spiritually? I am unstoppable.
How curiosity weaponises the internet into a 3 a.m. lecture hall.
The greatest trick the internet ever pulled was convincing us that learning has to be linear. In real life, knowledge arrives like a drunk pigeon. It swoops. It detours. It drops crumbs of brilliance in places you were not even looking.
Clicking through articles on Wikipedia is basically academic parkour. You start on photosynthesis and suddenly you are on bioluminescent fungi, which leads to deep sea submersibles, which somehow lands you in Cold War espionage, and now it is 2:47 a.m. and you are Googling whether pigeons understand maths.
That is not wasted time. That is cognitive cross training.
Meanwhile, YouTube has fully replaced my elective modules with long form explainers titled things like The forgotten canal that changed modern trade or Why this font nearly collapsed the printing industry. The thumbnails look unhinged. The content is Michelin star knowledge. And TikTok? TikTok will teach you astrophysics, labour law, ancient skincare routines, and the geopolitics of water rights in under two minutes while you are brushing your teeth.
Do I retain all of it. No.
Do I retain enough to casually destroy group chat trivia nights. Absolutely.
What makes rabbit hole learning so powerful is the lack of pressure. Nobody is grading you. Nobody is threatening pop quizzes. Your brain is free to wander, make connections, and hoard strange facts like a Victorian child collecting shiny rocks.
It is also sneakily interdisciplinary. A video about Roman roads turns into an architecture lesson. A post about composting spirals into climate science. A thread about linguistics sends you into anthropology. You are accidentally building a personal liberal arts degree curated entirely by vibes.
Universities give you modules. The internet gives you constellations.
And yes, sometimes that constellation includes why medieval monks kept cats in manuscripts. Growth is not always glamorous.
Why niche knowledge feels illegal but should absolutely count for credit.
Let us discuss the extremely unserious but deeply important category of information I like to call things I know for no professional reason whatsoever.
Examples include but are not limited to:
• how submarines recycle air
• why pearls are technically oyster trauma
• the science behind microwave turntables
• how bees decide where to build a new home
• what happens if you drop a penny from a skyscraper
None of these are in my exam syllabus. All of these live permanently in my frontal cortex.
There is something intoxicating about learning things that do not immediately serve productivity. No deadline. No rubric. Just intellectual snackery. And the wildest part is that this knowledge often sneaks into actual coursework sideways. You reference an obscure example in an essay. You make a metaphor in a presentation that makes your lecturer pause and blink. You connect two ideas that were never meant to meet because your brain once fell into a trench about maritime insurance law.
Rabbit hole learning builds pattern recognition. It trains you to synthesise, compare, and say sentences like, this is weirdly similar to something I saw in a video about volcanic plumbing.
Also, let us be real. Knowing odd things makes you hot at dinner parties.
Not in a glamorous way. In a deeply unsettling, why do you know that, lean closer, tell me more kind of way.
Curiosity also keeps academia fun. When coursework becomes a checklist, rabbit holes remind you that learning is supposed to be thrilling, confusing, expansive, and occasionally useless in the most beautiful way. They bring back the wonder. The spark. The gasp of realising how enormous and interconnected the world actually is.
If that is not the point of education, I would like to file a complaint with the concept of school.
How to fall into rabbit holes responsibly, or at least with snacks.
Before anyone panics, I am not suggesting you replace your syllabus with videos about black holes narrated by men in turtlenecks. Balance. Boundaries. Academic decorum.
Here is how to indulge curiosity without fully abandoning your degree.
First, time box the chaos. Tell yourself you get thirty minutes of exploration after finishing one lecture recording. Will it turn into an hour. Probably. But at least you tried.
Second, keep a notes file titled Things I learned instead of revising. Shockingly useful. Future you will mine it for essay intros, examples, and that one conversation starter that saves a painfully silent tutorial.
Third, follow creators and writers who cite sources. Hot take. Receipts are sexy.
Fourth, connect what you find back to class. Ask yourself how this random discovery links to what you are studying. Congratulations, you just turned procrastination into enrichment.
And finally, forgive yourself for being curious. Education is not supposed to flatten you into a memorisation machine. It is meant to stretch you until questions start spilling out of your pockets.
Snack optional. Encouraged, actually.
My syllabus is neat, but my mind is a nightclub.
Do I still need to revise for finals. Yes. Urgently. With highlighters.
Will I continue to disappear into intellectual sinkholes about ancient plumbing systems and satellite trajectories. Also yes. With enthusiasm.
Rabbit hole learning has taught me that curiosity does not care about departmental boundaries. It leaps fences. It steals chalk. It shows up uninvited to lectures you were not registered for and sits in the front row asking spicy questions.
My semester gives me structure. The internet gives me wonder. One keeps me employable. The other keeps me alive inside.
So here is my love letter to chaotic curiosity. To late night tabs I will never close. To niche obsessions that last forty eight hours and then vanish forever. To knowledge collected purely because it sparkled.
If education is the road, rabbit holes are the scenic route with questionable signage, breathtaking views, and absolutely no regard for your bedtime.
And honestly. Worth every click.
For more such articles, visit Her Campus at MUJ. And if you’re the kind of person who indulges rabbit holes, Niamat Dhillon at HCMUJ seems like a good corner of the internet for you.