Learning How to Learn

After a recent conversation with a collegue, I felt inspired to address this topic. While the title addresses learning, this will be more about the broader scale of learning, specifically how to find answers.

Our schools are meant to educate us on material that is approved by their department to be relevant to the course topic. But as we start to build focus to a specific discipline, this information becomes more generic and less relevant to the questions being asked in class. This is on purpose, or at least it has been conveyed to be this way by school faculty since the application of the knowledge needs to be malleable to any circumstance. Building a fundamental understanding of the general concepts and behind the scene workings, is really the focus of the course. The problem, that so much other information is being presented to create this “general base of knowledge” that is not being applied to working projects, that building familiarity and by relation, understanding, is lost in the minutia.

For my education, this led me to seek other sources to then focus my attention on the task specifically. This might be the most important thing I learned from my undergrad, how to evaluate and find information. This is not something that came directly from my instruction, and my professors always promised they provide support if needed, but ultimately we are all individually accountable for our learning.

This has been an increasingly invaluable skill, as often it helps with problem-solving and making contributions even outside of your domain. I have learned is that more often than not, problems arise with no immediately discernable solution, but being able to know where and how to find answers (and hopefully understand those answers) has not only made me better at my job but a more valuable asset to my team and peers.

I will leave you with a story. A reporter interviewed Albert Einstein for an article he was writing. At the end of the interview, the reporter asked if he could have Einstein’s phone number to call if he had further questions. “Certainly,” Einstein replied. He proceeded to pick up the phone directory, looked up his phone number, wrote it on a slip of paper, and handed it to the reporter. Dumbfounded, the reporter said, “You are considered to be the smartest man in the world, and you can’t remember your own phone number?” “No,” Einstein answered. “Why should I memorize something I can so easily get from a book?”