Learning

I wasn't always a good student. Much of my time in primary and secondary school was spent avoiding homework and focusing on my burgeoning musical career. I wasn't wholly terrible; I did excel in a few subjects, like reading and writing. Actually, I think it was the relative ease with which I could read and write that saved me from a "doomed-to-be-special" academic career. And, believe me, some of it was very "special" indeed. It was thought that I had a learning disability in math, and I was treated (and educated) accordingly. I spent the first twenty years of my life believing that I was utterly incapable of mathematical thought. When I finally entered college, I figured out that was far from true. The story of how I came to be thought of as a special ed. student is way too long to recount and is fraught with dull, childhood-in-the-first-world trauma. And it isn't really want I want to talk about. The important thing is that, once I was twenty-one and finally in college, I learned that all one really needs to do if one wants to learn math is to practice.   In fact, one doesn't even need to practice all that much. One simply needs to do her homework.

I admit it. It wasn't until college that I truly learned how to learn. The do-your-work principle applies to most if not all disciplines, and I discovered, much to my delight, that I could master things to which I dedicated some effort. It wasn't just the result that delighted me about this new approach, though; as it turned out, I also came to love the process of learning itself. I mean, think about it: things that initially seemed impossible become effortless through the simple act of thinking, and thinking is something we humans are notoriously good at. What could be simpler? I still can't believe I thought things were otherwise for so many years.

I'm proud to say that I graduated college with a 3.93 GPA, and that not one math class contributed to its imperfection. Yes, I went to a state school, but I think that my score would have been comparable at nearly any other university. I attribute my success to that precious realization that most things don't come automatically -- we're not born with a priori knowledge that can be merely awakened with one glance at a blackboard. Even the most intelligent among us must do some amount of thinking in order to attain knowledge. And you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way. If I could upload information from a USB stick directly into my brain, I'd be hesitant to... yeah, okay, that would be pretty cool.

But seriously, the act of learning is one of the most pleasurable in existence.

Why am I going on about this? Well, I just came home from Finnish class, during which our teacher asked us to write sentences using some of the verbs that we know. I began with simple constructions, all of which were correct, so I went on to explore more complex sentences. The teacher came by to point out my mistakes, I corrected them, and I'll try never to make them again.

We spent about 45 minutes doing this. It was a little like I had fallen asleep and missed a good 40 of those minutes, since it seemed to me that I'd only done five or ten minutes of work. But then it was time to go, so I packed up my things and walked home. On my way, I realized that I had never known just how interesting, how stimulating, how absolutely fascinating studying a foreign language can be, and that I'd probably love to take this class even if it weren't essential to my integration.

We're cheated out of so many things in the US, and one is good foreign language training. Sure, I studied German in high school, but I learned almost nothing. Since I hadn't yet learned how to learn, I didn't do much studying outside of class and, in class, well, let's just say we ate bratwurst and watched Das Boot with subtitles far more than we spoke German.

I think after I learn an acceptable amount of Finnish, I'll try my hand at German. If I can learn Finnish, how hard can it be to learn a little Deutsch?