Monday, June 21

It Takes Time to Learn

In my first entry I wanted to share with you a reflection about my learning experience. I don't know about you, but I realised that most of the time when studying I was more concerned with quantity than quality. That is, I wanted to have things done as quickly as possible and before I had finished something, I was already worrying myself with what I had to do next. And many times I was disappointed because I felt I was not advancing fast enough with my reading or assignments.


This year, however, I decided to adopt a different approach to studying. I would forget about deadlines and exams and grades and would focus on what I was doing at the moment, trying to do it as thoroughly as I could. And in this way I found I could really enjoy studying and learning.

Sometimes we forget we are following a course of studies we ourselves have chosen, or, at least, I believe that is the case for most of us. We should enjoy the process of learning and not judge all of our efforts by results.

So far this new perspective on studying has worked wonderfully for me and has given me a great sense of accomplishment as well. Now when I'm studying a subject I take all the time I need to fully understand what I'm reading. I check pronunciation, I look for extra information when I feel I could use more background knowledge to really appreciate what I'm reading. And I do it without constantly worrying about the time it is taking. Because I know it is not wasted time.

An example of how well this has worked for me is the Linguistics exam, which was the last one I sat for, back in March. I took an entire month to study for that exam and I can tell you I remember much more about that subject than any other I may have studied for in less time because I wanted to sit for as many subjects as possible.

I believe it is a question of trying to reduce stress and realising that the ticking time bomb in our minds is only  fictitious.


I would like to share with you some words by Alejandro Dolina (in Spanish of course), which have a lot to do with the point I'm trying to make in this post.

LA AVENTURA DEL CONOCIMIENTO Y EL APRENDIZAJE

I hope you enjoy it !




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2 comments:

  1. Magalí25 June 2010 at 21:25

    Juli, reading your post was like reading about me. I haven't tried that new approach you have, but all the rest is exactly what happens to me all the time.
    This course of studies seems endless and we try to do many subjects and sit for all of them as soon as possible, and in the end I guess we're not really learning.
    I'll try to apply what you said to this call. I enrolled to sit for two subjects (Literature II and Social Studies II). But, after this, I've made the decision of concentrating fully on Social Studies, which for me is actually very interesting, but I've always thought of it as a huge burden from 2nd year I never get over with.
    Thanks so much for this post! It has been highly insightful for me.

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  2. Estefi Militello27 June 2010 at 00:10

    Juli! what you wrote is totally true!It's about time we started to enjoy what we're studying, or else it'll come the day when we'll realise we may not want to keep on studying something that's causing much more pain that happiness.After all, we've chosen to follow this path, nobody has talked us into it,so we should chill out a bit and channel our energies differently, not wasting time in impossible study schemes that can only lead us to failure and to build up a feeling of helplessness inside us, which is totally counterproductive . I believe, as you well said, that hurrying to get our degrees as fast as possible is not the right thing to do.

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