Learning Pre-requisites!
Willingness is the key to unlock the door to the knowledge. Yet it is not the only thing, we require to focus our energy to move that knob and finally push that door.
Sanskriti my elder one, had been struggling to complete a chapter in Geography — ‘Climate.’ First day I asked her to complete the chapter in my typical managerial style, she reluctantly picked up the book and started reading it, with a continuous chant about the topic’s difficulty. The next day when I asked her progress it was not much, I was more vigorous in demand, she again picked up the book and this time her excuse was Geography is boring. By the third day my patience had thinned out further, sensing the anger on my face, she picked up the book and shortly received a message from her on WhatsApp — as a Computer Engineer, what use would this chapter be in the future. By now she had pushed back for the third time in this week and I too didn’t want to sound too pushy to the teenager, couldn’t afford to be an unwelcome guest in her room.
To make her comfortable, I picked up the book myself and started skimming the topic, it seemed power packed with lot of information and data points. Next couple of days I evaded asking her about the chapter since I too had been guilty of not getting through it. At last, I did the easiest thing, promised to teach her later in the day. With no option left, picked up the book and started reading it. May be the stars were aligned for me or I was really in the zone, the moment I picked up the topic, page after page was a cake walk for me, didn’t realised that I had spent almost an hour on the topic and was able to grasp all the concepts and most of the data. Another half an hour I mastered the final bits of data and practiced all the questions at the end of the chapter of course referring to content. Same evening, we sat for 2 hours in her room and voila by the end of the session she seemed confident enough to agree for a short quiz the following day.
Don’t know till when she would remember this topic. Yet this episode has taught me 3 valuable lessons on pre-requisites of learning.
1. First and the foremost, when I was willing to learn then only the concept started to look easy.
2. Second, willingness is only the starting point, I must focus on the topic to complete it in sufficient time otherwise willingness too will not last forever.
3. Finally, brain has a limited capacity and some information will definitely fizzle out, so revise it’s the final push to master the topic.
Is there anything which you must learn and have been avoiding or procrastinating? Bring that topic in front; be willing to face it; focus on it for some more time and review to make it happen. You will see that as reality soon. Do let me know if that works for you?
