How Do You Learn?
Tue., March 13, 10:03 AM
This is a strange question, especially as I am neither a teacher nor a student.
As reading becomes more of a chore, I am watching (or listening to) a lot more television these days. I really enjoy quiz shows, but I'm constantly saying, "How come you don't know that?" Especially of students in graduate or law school. Leanring more and more about less and less? And then I remember a girl who called herself Andy.
I knew Andy in college; she was a straight A student. (Certainly she earned higher marks than I did!) One day we were discussing studying and note-taking, and this is what she told me: "I copy everything the instructor writes on the board; then I memorize my notes for the exams." She also said that, in most cases, she had forgotten it all within a month after finishing the course.
I was astounded. This had never occurred to me! I took notes by listening to what the instructor was saying and writing down the main points. I tended to remember longer than she did -- but I didn t get as many A's. I decided it would never work for me; I never did like "regurgitation courses." The School of Education was notorious for those, but I never felt it was worth the easy A.
Was Andy successful? I don't know. She did not graduate, because her high grades got her accepted into medical school after her junior year. If I could remember her real name, I would try to find out whether she actually became a doctor.
It seems to be an entirely different mindset. I try to learn as much as I can about everything around me. When I don't understand something, I tend to tuck it away until I learn something else that connects to it.
I have occasionally described myself as someone with a relational database mind. You may have heard the term, a Reader's Digest kind of mind. Yeah, that. I possess bits and bytes of information that I learned in elementary school. Why should I forget it? I might need it some day.
I only forget unimportant stuff -- like Andy's real name.
Today my dad would have been ninety-eight years old. Though he died twenty-eight years ago, he is still around. I must have gotten my study methods from him. More than forty years after he left high school, he had to take a placement exam for a part-time job. The interviewer said he did better than most recent high school graduates. No wonder I still say, "Nothing you ever learn is wasted." Except some old DOS commands. Ahem.
