Is It True That You Will Struggle Later If You Do Not Study?—What I Learned About the Real Purpose of Studying

“If you do not study, you will struggle later in life.”

I heard this countless times from parents and teachers when I was a child.

To a child, it probably sounds like unwanted advice. What does memorizing mathematical formulas have to do with your future? Will learning a hundred English words really make your life richer?

That was more or less how I used to see it too.

But after becoming an adult and observing society, I began to think that those words were pointing to something very real.

The issue is not academic credentials themselves.

Without the habit of studying, the number of cards you can play later in life gradually decreases.

The Ability to Study Matters More Than the Name of Your University

To be honest, the name of a university does have value. Attending a prestigious school is particularly important for those who want to enter a highly desirable major corporation or the senior civil service.

But that applies to only some people with ambitions to climb that particular ladder.

For an ordinary white-collar career, a reasonably good university is enough.

Even then, a university degree gives someone an advantage over a high school diploma when pursuing white-collar work.

Job listings commonly require at least a bachelor’s degree, and some positions are closed to anyone without one.

However, I think we miss the point if we see the value of university solely in the credential it provides.

Consider becoming a lawyer.

In Japan, graduating from university is not an absolute requirement for becoming a lawyer. There is a route through the preliminary bar examination, so the system provides a path that does not formally require a university degree.

Does that mean someone who finished only junior high school can easily decide:

“I will start working toward becoming a lawyer tomorrow”?

Having an entrance open in theory and being able to walk all the way through it are two different things.

The person must read law, memorize an enormous amount of information, write logically, and continue studying for a long time.

That is where study habits begin to matter.

For someone who has sat at a desk every day since childhood, read textbooks, researched what they did not understand, and prepared for examinations, the idea of “studying for several years to earn a qualification” is difficult but comprehensible.

Someone without the habit of studying must first build the habit itself.

That is a major difference.

Society Has a Surprising Number of Intellectual Hurdles

Studying is not necessary only for difficult professional qualifications such as law or medicine.

Even in an ordinary job, people must read manuals when a new system is introduced. They must relearn laws and internal rules when those change. In IT, they must research each new technology that appears.

The more advanced the work becomes, the more it requires the ability to:

“Research and understand unfamiliar things on your own.”

Conversely, people who struggle with this are more likely to find their options narrowing to work that can be done without reading instructions or that involves repeating the same task once it has been learned.

What matters is not whether someone is intelligent.

It is whether they can tolerate the act of studying something they do not know.

An Acquaintance Who Wanted to Move from Care Work into Nursing

I once spoke with an acquaintance who worked as a care worker.

They were working hard to save money.

When I asked what they were saving for, they said:

“I am going to school to become a nurse.”

I think this is a very clear example.

Care workers and nurses are permitted to perform different tasks. To become a nurse in Japan, a person must complete the required education and pass a national licensing examination.

Becoming a doctor changes the scope of what a person can do even further.

It is only natural that qualifications restrict who may perform certain work. We would have a serious problem if someone who had never studied medicine before yesterday could begin performing surgery today.

In other words, society deliberately creates:

Barriers that cannot be crossed without studying.

If my acquaintance wanted to move from care work into nursing, she had no choice but to cross that barrier.

Save the tuition.

Go to school.

Attend classes.

Study for the examinations.

Pass the national licensing examination.

Once again, the final requirement is the ability to study.

Studying Allows You to Change Direction in Life

I think this is the most important point.

There is no guarantee that someone will love the career they chose at eighteen for the rest of their life.

Their company may fail. Their entire industry may decline. AI may radically change the nature of their work.

When that happens, the person who can think:

“Then I will study something else”

is strong.

Earn a qualification.

Learn a new technology.

Research another industry.

Return to school if necessary.

For someone with the habit of studying, life can be rebuilt to some extent even after it is already underway.

That is why the value of studying is neither scoring 100 on childhood tests nor acquiring the name of a prestigious university.

It is about building the ability to move to another path when life reaches a dead end.

“If you do not study, you will struggle later in life.”

This probably means little to a child.

I would not have listened if someone had explained it to me when I was young either.

But as an adult, I understand what it means.

Studying does not guarantee success.

But when life stops going according to plan, people who know how to study still have another card to play.

Studying is not about predicting the future correctly. It is about being able to start again when your prediction turns out to be wrong.