As a typically overzealous freshman at the Major Fair, I put my email down for every major that sounded interesting, several majors I’d never even heard of and one major I really had no interest in but its booth had a cute guy. At the activities fair, I did pretty much the same thing. So, not surprisingly, I soon began receiving upwards of 50 emails every day.

Eager to take advantage of all opportunities, I dutifully began putting all the events I was emailed about into my calendar and attending them whenever I could.

In the past six months, I’ve been to book groups, talks with visiting writers and scholars, panels on the election, lectures on cultured meat and colloquiums on the Arctic. Not every event is amazing, but most of them are great, and some are truly phenomenal.

However, I’ve noticed that most of the talks, especially the humanities-based ones, have relatively small turnouts. At many events I’ve looked around and discovered that I’m one of the only undergrads — everyone else looks like graduate students, professors or Palo Alto locals. I couldn’t help but wonder why more undergraduates don’t go to these panels.

At first I thought it was because everyone is so busy, but people find time to see Trevor Noah and Solange. Ultimately, we make time for the things we prioritize. Stanford students may find time to go to one or two large events per quarter, but they seem to pass up almost everything that is not directly within their field of interest.

Taking a class outside of your major may seem like a big commitment, but going to a talk isn’t. On-campus talks present fantastic opportunities to get a taste of fields of study other than your own, yet most Stanford students attend only very large events or events targeted at their major. This seems like a shame. Isn’t the point of a liberal arts education to gain insight into many different fields?

Next time you get an email about an upcoming event that sounds interesting to you, put it in your calendar. And when the day rolls around, consider stopping by! A lot of the talks are fantastic. And if self-edification isn’t enough motivation for you, I’ve found that professors and TAs from within the department of the event often attend, which can earn you a lot of respect if they happen to be your TAs or professors. If not for yourself, do it for the extra credit! And who knows, you may even learn something along the way.