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The responsibility for learning lies with the student
Saturday, 8 September 2007
We are all too used to having things served up for us on a silver platter these days. If our coffee order takes more than a few minutes, we feel it's unacceptable. If our train is slightly late, it ruins our day. If we have to wait more than a few seconds for a website to load, we click somewhere else.
It's no wonder that many people develop a sense of entitlement. A world has been built around us that seems ready-made to cater to our every whim. Of course, we come to expect such things.
But when it comes to learning, there's no getting around that most worthwhile skills take hard work to pick up. You have to be willing to take the frustration, the boredom and the confusion that comes with being a student. That's just the way life is.
In most areas, if you really want to improve, there really is no substitute for some kind of formal instruction. A university degree will teach you skills it would take a lifetime to learn on your own. A golf coach will do more for your swing in an hour than you'll learn on your own in twenty rounds. A piano teacher will have you playing something useful in a fraction of the time a music book will.
Yet even with the advantages that formal education provides, the responsibility for learning still lies with the student. There is no magic bullet to get around the fact that our minds and bodies take time to pick up new skills. Since you're the one with the hands of the controls of those particular instruments, you're also the one who's going to have to put in the vast majority of the effort. That's just the way it is.
If you want to pick up a new skill, be willing to put in the effort required. Give yourself every advantage with the right tools, the right teaching environment, and the right resources. But realise that the responsibility and work will ultimately rest on your shoulders. And that's the way it should be.
 | A good strategy for learning difficult subjects | | Some things are just difficult to study. They contain complicated facts that are confusing to the uninitiated. Having to learn such things can be a very frustrating experience! What's the best strategy to cope? |  | Don't buy into the "no fear" bulldust | | Okay, stand back and hold your breath. I'm about to question one of the quasi-religious commandments of personal development. It's the one that says fear is all bad and should be overcome. That the aim of life should be to "live without fear", usually followed by some blather about love being the opposite of fear. |  | Be generous to the future | | The future is like a giant spiritual bank account. You can invest in it, or withdraw from it any time you like. How you treat this bank account plays a big part in deciding how successful you are. | | It's hard to appreciate the emotional impact of something until you experience it | | When I was a young adult, the father of a friend of mine passed away. My friend had a very close relationship with his father, and was devastated. He went into a deep depression for a number of months. |  | Perfect contentment leads to stagnation | | Have a look at how so many of us live our lives. We get up in the morning, go out all day and work, work, work. Whether in a rich country or a poor one, a good neighbourhood or bad, you can be sure that most of the people around you will be working most of the time. | | Don't reward bad behavior in yourself and others | | Almost everyone has done things in life that they knew at the time were wrong. But sometimes, there seems to be an overwhelming force pushing towards what we know is going to be a bad outcome. Why can't we control ourselves? | | Recognise the two universes you live in | | One of my favourite works of fiction is His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman. It's about parallel universes that exist, similar to our own but all different. The main characters find doors between these universes and go off on great adventures. | | Find something to live for | | I've just finished reading Viktor Frankl's “Man’s Search for Meaning”, which I think is a very interesting book. Frankl is a neurologist and psychiatrist who has developed a theory called Logotherapy. | | Beef up your mental toolkit | | We are all born with certain reasoning tools which are popularly referred to as "common sense". We know that it's a good idea to avoid pain, for example. | | Accumulate lots of small victories | | When I was at school, a teacher told me an interesting fact. Well, when I say fact, I'm not sure if it was really true. It's more of an interesting allegory. He said that the ancient Romans used to build all their roads in a zig-zag pattern rather than a straight line. |
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