>Isn’t learning lisp like learning a a dead language that once you leave the lisp class you’ll never use again?

Well, similar to learning a dead language, lisp has lots of benefits!

For example, learning some latin is very useful when you come across new (to you) words with latin roots for understanding what they mean!

Similarly, learning lisp is very useful for understanding useful ways to solve new programming problems that you come across.

This is what people mean when they say that lisp will change the way you think as a programmer.

But even beyond that, lisp can be very productive. Especially some of its derivatives (like clojure).

Edit: I did not see that someone already replied with a similar response. But I will leave this here anyway.