Learning to learn

Studying, cramming, making assignments, appearing for exams - they make education burdensome, but learning... Learning is beautiful. I read this (or maybe something like this) a long while ago and it did strike a chord. I could relate - the times when I could understand something after a bit of effort, the times I could relate the concepts from books to real life - they did make me happy. 

But this happiness has been ephemeral and a little difficult to find because learning requires time and I somehow fail to manage mine properly (Is it just me?). I swear, my intentions are good - I want to make timetables, stick to them, devote time to every subject, sneak in a work of fiction here and there and learn - not just for the sake of exams, but for the sake of knowing but the intentions have not always materialised into actions and I find it really exhausting. It is a vicious cycle - I'm exhausted by how I let opportunities to learn go by, how I let time slip through my hands and then I find myself too exhausted to sit still and read, observe and learn!

School was way kinder, except for the apparently life changing *eye-roll* board exams where all the emphasis was on getting as high a score as possible. The break from school to college kind of broke me too. Okay, fine, I know I talk about it more than I should, it might sound like a justification for being mediocre but the vestiges of the pain and regret haunt me still, at times. So I deal with it by pouring it out.

No one told me life was gonna be this way!

It was an avenue for growth and learning, alright, and I did not come out unscathed. I think I would always remember that time in a bittersweet way (more bitter, less sweet?). I might have memorised a fact or two across three years but the department of learning did not see much business, except maybe a little bit in the field of duniyadari. Can you imagine the anguish the undergraduate me experienced when she put in effort to read and memorise discourses and then did not see the results worth of the effort put in? ( I do not remember this fondly!)

Of course, silly girl! You forgot that memorising was no substitute for learning!

The swarm of exams that followed the time in graduation did me no good either. For three years, there was not a time when I was not preparing for an exam or awaiting the result of another (*deja vu* Have I written this before?). I was sapped out of the happiness derived from learning and for that matter, happiness in general (I don't recall this time fondly either).

It had to pass someday too and I begun again. But this time, I took up something I had no background in - Psychology - mostly because I wanted to understand what was happening to me and also because I was always interested in human behaviour and emotions. 

Has it been easier? No. I am the kind of student who would first feel guilty of not knowing something and then I'll go find the answer. Diving into a subject I hardly knew anything about, that to for Masters, wasn't really a cakewalk and I didn't expect it to be so. I am trying to learn that the reason educational institutions exist, teachers exist because they teach, they impart education, they help you learn - YOU DON'T HAVE TO KNOW EVERYTHING!

I am making my peace with the fact that it is okay to not know everything, it is okay not to know something and there is no shame in it. I think it is those incidents - which are deap seated somewhere in my subconscious, where students were humiliated in classrooms for not knowing something - those incidents have messed me up! It wasn't always that I was hesitant in speaking up, but along the way, somewhere, the conditioning happened!

Now, at 24, in the second year of my Masters degree, I am still trying to unlearn, forget and re-learn. It is coming along fine for now. Acknowledging the problem was perhaps the first step. It is not that bad, you know? I am learning to learn, again.