It’s unbelievable how very small your world is and how you don’t actually realise until it slaps you in the face. And when your world is small - as mine was, as all of our worlds inevitably are - then your thinking aligns itself within the confines of your world, and your perspectives are - sad to say - narrow. It’s not like we can help it. No one can know everything there is to know about the world, but what I’ve realised is the key factor to fulfillment and learning is to have an open mind and attitude to change and learning.
 |
| The world is so big, and we are ultimately so small |
 |
| Armed with my high-school credentials |
Which I’m learning the hard way. Thrown into university armed with my high self-esteem and high-school credentials, I thought I knew me, I thought I knew my personal method to success, I thought I knew my most productive self. I thought I knew what I knew in terms of academia. Lo and behold what applies in high school doesn’t apply in university. The same can be said for location. Yo, what applies in Trinidad certainly doesn’t apply in the U.S. And what applies to our old, British-based examination-oriented system certainly didn’t apply for this liberal, interdisciplinary approach to education.
For my entire academic life, success was rooted in my note-taking. I prided myself on neat, legible, creative, and mostly perfect notes and you know what that counts for here? Zilch, nada. It doesn’t really matter if you get down everything the professor writes on the board if you don’t understand the basic (mostly complex) concepts behind the theories and notes. So while I sat there assiduously flicking my wrists and spattering those words on my page with ultimate precision, my brain could’ve been internalising that damn DeBroglie equation.
Oh and another thing: being prepared for class is so amazingly essential. It’s like you are supposed to be teaching yourself and the professor is there to just make you think more and dig deeper. But if you go to class with zero understanding of the topic, you’d be damned if you think that the professor is there to explain it to you in baby steps. They aren’t here to teach. They’re here to make you learn. They’re here to make you think.
 |
| Those gears were turning in my head* |
So while I sat there - still taking those meticulous notes, mind you - those gears were turning in my head. And I realised that 90% of the lesson was going over my head because I didn’t know s***. That's the raw truth of the matter and you’re only doing yourself dirty if you decide not to prepare.
Maybe I should put down the pen, and try to pay attention and get the concepts. Maybe, just maybe. Naturally fear crept in. What if I miss something? What if I needed some bit of information that professor wrote on the board in a later class? I needed to write down everything! Because with no prior knowledge of the topic, how was I to know what was and wasn’t important?! And there it comes again. The importance of knowing the topic inside out before class, so that your filtering system in class is top notch to ensure ultimate efficiency and learning.
High school: benefiting from a class meant being alert, and coming prepared to listen and write and in essence regurgitating concepts and lessons. University: benefitting from class meant coming with a solid understanding of the concept being taught (which means you’d taught yourself the topic before) and expecting to get more from the professor, or ask those intelligent questions you had. So coming unprepared not only makes you confused about the content, but also confused about what questions to ask, because you’re wondering if it’s too basic and if you’d know the answer if you’d only read in the first place. Gone were the days of teachers reading notes! Yo, gone were the days of asking the teacher to slow down ‘cuz hey we’ve got to get it down word for word. Gone are the days of the teacher telling you exactly what you need to know for the exam, and what’s relevant and what isn’t.
 |
| In case ya missed it, the photoelectric effect was discovered by Einstein in 1905 ;) |
I had to now decipher on my own what was relevant and what wasn’t. Was it relevant to mass spectroscopy that Albert Einstein discovered the photoelectric effect in 1905? Probably not. Did I waste brain function writing it down. You betcha. I was so embedded in the system I was used to, so stuck with the mindset that details and memorising facts were important, when it was really all about the big picture. What’s the point of being able to recite the uses of mass spec word for word when you couldn’t come up with an experimental design on your own? What’s the point coming to a place to learn if you’re afraid of asking questions? Don’t answers come precisely from asking questions? Because is there really a right or wrong question? No. So ask away.
*Gears photo: Thinking by Maurizio Fusillo from the Noun Project