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The learning curve
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To learn new things in life, one must have an open mind
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Your curiosity to know more takes you forward on the path of learning.
WE ALL remember that as children we couldn't wait for the summer vacation to start! But after a few weeks, it seemed like the long holiday would never end. We missed school and all the fun we had with our friends. Then there was the excitement of beginning another year with new books, pen/pencil boxes, backpacks and shoes. Everyone was eager to let the mind explore new concepts and theories!
If this is how youngsters feel, what about adults who are in a learning environment? There are many who return to the classroom to complete what they had left off; or the demands of a competitive job environment compel them to study or specialise. Irrespective of the reason or the motivation, what is the ideal classroom attitude? After all, one's learning curve is dependent on this.
An attitude is a mental position, a feeling, an emotional response to your environment that makes you value certain experiences, activities and people, while devaluing others because they do not gel well with your mental positioning. In short, it is the way we view the world. We shape our attitudes through personal experiences and exposures and we look at and judge the world through the window of our attitudes.
Just from this definition, we can see how dangerous a wrong attitude is for our own growth and enrichment. If we do not grow and evolve, we might as well be dead. Stagnation stinks. So let us check our attitude.
Are you sitting there because you believe you have to? Do yourself and others in the classroom a favour: excuse yourself. You are going to be miserable or unbearable to others, depending on where you are on the spectrum of being totally non-involved on one end, or totally belligerent on the other. Both are disastrous. Teaching is not something that is done to you; neither is it entertainment. Your educational experience depends on whether you choose to actively engage yourself in the learning process or not. There is an old Chinese saying: teachers can only open the door, you decide if you want to enter or not. They cannot walk on your behalf. It is your curiosity that has to entice you to go forward, explore and demand to know more. There is no such thing as a "victim" of instruction. The guiding principle here is how demanding are you to extract the information you want. Do you ask questions? Pose challenges?
Learning is a personal experience. You are there for the selfish reason: "I want to know more." There is no room for others, meaning, if you have a doubt or an opinion, you owe it to yourself to know. Think about it this way, if it will make you feel better. When you are talking or exhibiting other distracting behaviour in a classroom, you are hardly thinking of others and how you are disturbing their personal journey. This creates more negative impressions about you than any question of yours ever will. So quit this thinking. The correct attitude is: "I must take responsibility for my own learning."
If you're asking yourself, "Is this going to be part of the test?" what you're really saying is, "If there is no test or grades, I am not going to take this seriously enough to learn it." What a self-defeating sentiment! There might not be a test in the traditional sense of the word. But life itself is a continuous challenge with no retakes. Instead of adopting a minimalist attitude of `only-do-what-I-have-to' to learning, look at it as a preparation for challenges that may come your way; otherwise your mind will discourage exploration, risk-taking, creativity, observations and reflections.
You're not learning for your boss or your company, you are learning for yourself. The helpful attitude you can take towards yourself should be: "If I don't invest myself in my education, the one who loses is me." As adults, the natural inquisitiveness of our childhood disappears under layers of self-importance, wrong perceptions and lack of self-confidence. We get so busy with earning a living, caring for our family and doing other mundane things that before we know it, the lack of exercising our minds narrows our approach and attitudes about who and where we are, limiting what we could become. Effective learning starts with the attitude that "there are many things I don't know, or am not aware of" and "what are the new things I learned today"? Evolving in life is more than just mechanics; it's a mindset.
CHITRA S. DANGER
(proetique@yahoo.co.in)
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