Are you really learning?

One of the best moments many people celebrate is the end of school, college or any form of institutionalized teaching system. That joy may come because of success, the feeling of conquest or the at least it is over feeling.

However, learning is bigger than that and starts from birth, ending in death. All the time there is something to be learned, something to assimilate from the environment, news or personal experiences.

In all researches, nobody has found a limit for learning, except in the will from the learner and his or her preparedness for that. And this is the point…

Many people several times use the word learning in a very casual way, like when they go through a tough period. They make a mistake or they say I learn something every day. Let’s understand something… Learning means change; so, if anyone has learned anything, that means they have changed even slightly.

When you learn that the square root of 4 is 2, your brain changes and that almost absurd discovery helps you to create a trait of personality so that when you face a problem you don’t sum or rest only, but you try the square root too… that means, you try to find the reasons that situation is happening, instead of just find a simple solution. So, yes, maths changes you and anything you really learned does the same.

Not all situations are used for learning – not that they don’t have something others may learn from it. It is just that learning implies change and for that change to happen you need a few things:

• A complete or partial understanding of whatever you are learning from, different from the understanding you have up to that moment. Different means contents, form or attitude.
• To reflect on the situation, by going beyond the actual facts and seeing either the big picture or focus on something in particular.
• To stop and check the self, looking for the change that situation helped you to bring about.
• The last thing is not obligatory, but quite useful: to verbalize the change that happened in you, the learning you have assimilated, by writing or talking to other people. Then you can help other people to learn the same.

So, next time you want to tell others you have learned something, check with this list if you REALLY have learned it… If not, by doing the checking, you would probably learn anyway.