Have you ever wondered why you weren’t able to concentrate in a class?

Your thoughts wander about everywhere from plants, water droplets, sky, milky way, universe….. the moment you start listening to a lecture. Generally, people have different levels of concentration. Few people could concentrate for 10 min and few could concentrate for hours together. This brings us to a point, what makes us different? I would say, it’s all about how our brains are wired.

I am an introverted person. I like spending time alone with myself. Whenever I have to take up a project, first thing I do is (after thoroughly understanding the project), take a tea break and think about the project in my head, prepare different scenarios and come up with solutions that helps me complete the project in the best possible way. I prepare myself for the unforeseen circumstances with scenario planning. This is my style of learning and understanding.

When I look back at my school life, I wonder how did I survive through those years as I never really enjoyed sitting through those classes and listening to those never ending lectures, taking notes, wondering which topics are important for exams, how many marks will I get, so on…on and on. When I ventured through my life, I learnt a lot on my own like many people do. The subjects learnt at school seemed irrelevant and useless.

I thoroughly enjoy a subject when I researched about it, collected material myself and learnt about it all on my own. I don’t have to worry about giving exams as I implement whatever I learnt on projects. This process really helped me learn subjects I once feared. I wondered, if the learning process is so simple why not schools implement this process. Then, it occurred to me, People have different learning styles. Not everyone enjoys the same learning process. All that schools could do is accommodate different styles of learning.

I don’t want to debate about how schools should adapt themselves to accommodate children with different learning styles as that it is a different topic on its own. Sir Ken Robinson gave an excellent Ted Talk on the very same topic (you can watch it below). He did a lot of interesting work on education.

My question is, as adults why we still stick to the same style of learning from schools. Colleges and Universities are no different. The same boring lectures, assignments and projects. Because, that is what everybody is doing. We tend to follow general norms and fear experimenting.

If you are unable to follow a lecture and find it difficult to cope up with the information being thrown at you (information overload), don’t worry. Try reading the topic on your own, take notes at your own pace and implement your learning on a project. If you find this method useful, then you are not a visual/auditory learner. You might be a kinesthetic (hands-on) learner. You like getting your hands dirty.

You can learn more about learning styles from this link.

This is a huge topic by itself as lot of research is being done to understand the learning styles of people. I just scratched the surface tip of a huge mountain. My intention in writing this article is to plant a thought in you to understand yourself a bit more in terms of your learning style. If you don’t like a particular way of learning, change the way your learn. You don’t have to be hard on yourself by following the general norms. It is your learning and ONLY YOU are responsible for it.

Note: I am not an expert in psychology. The thoughts expressed in this article are based on my experience and observations.

Final thoughts: I want you to research and discover your way of learning.

Happy Learning!