Learning About Learning
My blog is nearing its first anniversary. Admittedly, I have failed to maintain it as I would have liked to over the past year. My instinctive response is to attribute this to a lack of time. As my college graduation swiftly draws near, I've been obsessed with the notion of time lately. With classes, work, side projects, and graduation rituals at hand, I find myself constantly thinking that there's just not enough time in one day. Not to mention that my exercise routine, Japanese studies, and myriad of other hobbies have suffered as well. Inevitably, there isn't enough time to do everything, but as I found myself updating my old articles about Japanese study, I realized that what I was trying to teach others about language study I should be applying to my own daily life.
A year ago, I was a Japanese major dissatisfied with the structure of my university's program. A student nearing the end and far cry from fluency. But in this harsh climate, my devotion blossomed. I was motivated and passionate and on the cusp of discovery. I decided that the only way I would ever become proficient at Japanese would be through rigorous self-study and began immediately. In addition to this process, I also sought to write about my experience, so that others in my position could learn from my successes and failures. I started by deriving what I perceived to be the steps to achieving fluency. The guide is loose and ambiguous, but served its purpose as an abstract template for my studies. Pulling from numerous resources, I developed a strict regimen with monumental results. In November of 2012, I delved into this process and began writing a lengthy guide about my journey.
Over the course of six months, I was able to learn how to write and the English meanings for the 2,200 jōyō kanji (commonly used Chinese characters) and vastly expand my knowledge of intermediate and advanced grammar and diction. While this is an impressive feat, I'm certainly not implying that I'm by any means smarter than the average person. Instead of raw intellect, I was able to accomplish this through sheer determination and an effective routine.
Think about what you've done today. Sure, you've probably attended class or gone to work all day, but think about the time that you may have wasted in between. What if instead of spending those fifteen minutes after lunch or class mindlessly browsing the internet or reading social media feeds, you did something that you truly enjoy and stand to benefit from? What if you tried achieving your life goals in increments of fifteen minutes? That's exactly how I did it. I replaced the mind-numbing consumption of bland Facebook statuses and trite internet humor with constant language practice. I shuffled through flashcards instead of statuses or tweets and read news in Japanese instead of English. I used my phone and computer in Japanese in order to make myself constantly see the language. With this mindset, finding an hour or two everyday to study everyday wasn't nearly as difficult as it seemed to be at first. For those six months, I was as submerged in Japanese culture as a busy computer science student thousands of miles away from Japan could be. My only regret was stopping after those six months. I cannot stress enough the value of immersing yourself in your passions.
The Twitter Generation wants knowledge in bite-sized, concise servings. Because of this mentality, we often lack the dedication to read a novel as opposed to the synopsis. We also seem to enjoy discussing the possibilities more than making them reality. With this being said, we are afforded a wealth of interactive learning tools that previous generations never even dreamt of. I attribute my accomplishments as much to the digital wonders of today as I do to my own hard labor. Use living in the Information Age to its fullest potential.
I've been using Japanese study as an extended example, and you may have absolutely no interest in it. That's perfectly fine, but I'm sure that there's something that you want to learn or do that requires an equivocal amount of toil. I challenge you to push yourself to achieve it. It won't be easy, and at times, you may want to give up. However, the journey is every bit as important as the ending. If you can't find pleasure in your struggles, then I urge you to question your reasoning. Be sure to keep the endeavor fun or you'll burn out quickly.
Comparing my Japanese studies over the last year with my largely unsuccessful studies during the two years prior to that, I can't help but feel like I've wasted too much time. Lately, I keep catching myself daydreaming of where I could be now if I had discovered how to learn like this much earlier on. Of course, the glaring fault of this is that I'm still wasting time thinking about it. It's never too late to get started.
As thankful as I am to have studied at a top-tier institution like the University of Texas, I have to question the driving force behind my alma mater: research or education? At such a university, a great deal of responsibility is placed on the student's ability to learn independently, something that was never properly instilled during my high school years. Honestly, it wasn't until my fourth year of college that I felt like I knew how to learn.
Despite this, everything I needed to know about computer science I learned during my first year of college. As a freshman computer science student, I took programming and logic courses. In the programming courses, I learned how to approach general problems using basic algorithms. In the logic courses, I was taught how to reason and develop proofs and theories. I understood the content of the classes, but their implications were lost on me. Nearly any technology field can be reduced to programming, logic, and mathematics. With these fundamental concepts at hand, I had the ability to learn web development or graphics or nearly anything during my first year of college, but I wouldn't realize this for some time. The only true failure is not even trying.
For the majority of my college career, I had the mindset that certain concepts and skills were out of my reach. I was trapped in the mentality that you can only learn what you are taught in class, and there were serious implications to this fallacy. Because of this, I never strove to create or learn much outside of the scope of my coursework. It wasn't until I started deconstructing seemingly complex tools and concepts into simpler, digestible steps that I felt like I could grow not only as a computer scientist but as an individual. Don't shy away from what you don't understand, because it's often not as intricate as you think.
Computer science is based on inherent laziness. Software in general is designed to make life easier by automating tasks and repetition. Effective software design is based on modularization and reuse, ultimately minimizing the amount of work that needs to be done. One day, we as developers will replace ourselves with software that itself creates software, and there will be nothing to be done. But yet again, I seemed to have been oblivious to the obvious. I taught myself discipline and effective learning practices, but only applied them to Japanese. Learning how to learn is an abstract and unique concept that can be applied to any field of study.
I've spent the last week or slowly piecing together my thoughts about what I wanted to pass on from my college experience. I've been adding and removing passages from here in an effort to keep this relatively coherent. Now, graduation lies less than one month away. Most of my classmates seem complacent with their academic accomplishments, but I finally feel at peace knowing that my education has only just begun. I've spent this semester stuck on my preconceived notion that true learning ends when school does. This week I started following my own advice again; living like I did nearly a year ago. Getting back into the routine. For now, I'll be that person at the gym flipping through hundreds of kanji flashcards in between sets of weightlifting. Trying to make sense of hosts speeding through complex dialogues on Japanese news stations while I ride the bus to campus. Squeezing in lines of code on my personal website and an iOS app in between classes. Reading up on photography and graphic design over lunch. Documenting the journey. I think it's the perfect way to end one era of my life and start another: achieving my life goals fifteen minutes at a time.