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It
was about four years ago when I stayed up late to study three different
subjects for the last day of the high school final exam. Even though it was the
worst way to prepare for the test day, I managed to graduate with decent grades.
Now I realized that night was also the last time I studied since not long
after that, I had my first ever job. I then got a taste of money; I became lazy
to study and preferred to focus on earning more until then I had my second and
third jobs. I lost interest in college, and it felt like I never had those
conversations about aiming for the top universities with my friends.
Until
recently when I finished a book titled Learning How to Learn by Barbara
Oakley and her two co-authors, I came across a chapter where Alistair
McConville, one of the co-authors, repeated his chemistry lessons in summer
school. He then sat for the chemistry exam with a bunch of 17-year-old students
about a year after he decided to learn high school chemistry again, while most
of them worked on it five years before. The fact that he was 42 years old and wasn’t
afraid to go back to a beginner level to understand chemistry is so inspiring,
it makes me think about continuing my education. But unlike how he felt like there’s
still a big piece missing from his learning, I feel like there’s so much I
don’t know about.
A
little review about the book, though, if you’re looking for a fun—detailed
guide for effective learning techniques, you should read this. Although there
are a number of big words related to neural terms, this book is still really easy
to understand. Even for someone with an intermediate English level like me. Overall,
I’d say this one is a gem. You’ll want to check this out.
Also,
I just found such a really interesting coincidence when I write this. See, I started
to track my reading progress and note some of the details that I think
important, as well as writing down the main idea of each chapter I read to
practice “active recall”. Apparently, I started reading this book on the same
day it was published: August 7th!!😲😮😱
