the textbook is a manual not the finished product
I'm currently going through an uncertain change in my perception, mostly linked to my inability to retain information and why.
I've always questioned the way the world works and why things happen the way that they do. That's why I pursued academia, specifically biology. And I made it my goal to learn as much as I could about living beings so that I can make sense of the world and add clarity to my perception as well as understand what it is that the world needs more of.
However, being in my third year of my Bachelor's now, I began to realize how little information I actually retain and why this happens. I'm able to complete assignments and understand the concepts during the courses, but after a while things just slip away from my memory.
One of the courses I took however, didn't teach me about the natural world but more about myself and how we humans rely on movement, on enactivism, to understand the world deeply. This is just recently beginning to change the way that I personally learn.
I was never able to regurgitate facts and information when it was asked out of nowhere and out of context. I was never a walking encyclopedia no matter how much of a 'genius' I wanted to be. I never learned to memorize facts. And I guess in a way I always blamed the education system for not being impactful enough in their ways of teaching.
But it had nothing to do with the way I was taught, but my perception on my own way of learning. I've always liked creating, writing, crafting and making projects- whether that be art or presentations or pieces of writing. I've always told myself to stop consuming and start producing more. And I've never really thought that it would apply to my academic learning, until now.
I never thought that they reason why i remember and deeply understood the concepts I do end up remembering is because I was able to apply it, to use my own brain to interpret these facts.
To use knowledge as a tool for creating something new.
And I never really thought of knowledge as something that can be diminished to a tool, but it's true. Ofcourse, I understand somethings deeply and many concepts I can really feel passion in. But as soon as scientific phenomena steps in, I can never seem to be able to link that and the real world together. Because to be honest, these names and concepts are not real. Take molecular biology as an example. Many of the protein complexes and cascades that attempt to explain why things happen are just names that we humans assign to naturally occurring phenomena. These names hold no significance. If you are able to recite the processes that occur in G protein signalling, and all the MAPK cascades, then good job. But if that factual information is not applied through what you create, they hold no meaning. It is a hammer that never touches a nail. It is simply restating what another person has created.
Yes, knowledge you can obtain from reading textbooks and completing the homework. But long term storing and useful application of this knowledge is far more important and this is done through action- through creation. This is how YOU add meaning to that knowledge. The only way that the laws of science will ever be useful is if you make use of them, they are obsolete without its application.
True intelligence does not come from your ability to state facts out of nowhere. It comes from the skill in able to integrate that knowledge into action and 'real life'. This, to me, is what it means when they say that ignorance is bliss.
I've always questioned the way the world works and why things happen the way that they do. That's why I pursued academia, specifically biology. And I made it my goal to learn as much as I could about living beings so that I can make sense of the world and add clarity to my perception as well as understand what it is that the world needs more of.
However, being in my third year of my Bachelor's now, I began to realize how little information I actually retain and why this happens. I'm able to complete assignments and understand the concepts during the courses, but after a while things just slip away from my memory.
One of the courses I took however, didn't teach me about the natural world but more about myself and how we humans rely on movement, on enactivism, to understand the world deeply. This is just recently beginning to change the way that I personally learn.
I was never able to regurgitate facts and information when it was asked out of nowhere and out of context. I was never a walking encyclopedia no matter how much of a 'genius' I wanted to be. I never learned to memorize facts. And I guess in a way I always blamed the education system for not being impactful enough in their ways of teaching.
But it had nothing to do with the way I was taught, but my perception on my own way of learning. I've always liked creating, writing, crafting and making projects- whether that be art or presentations or pieces of writing. I've always told myself to stop consuming and start producing more. And I've never really thought that it would apply to my academic learning, until now.
I never thought that they reason why i remember and deeply understood the concepts I do end up remembering is because I was able to apply it, to use my own brain to interpret these facts.
To use knowledge as a tool for creating something new.
And I never really thought of knowledge as something that can be diminished to a tool, but it's true. Ofcourse, I understand somethings deeply and many concepts I can really feel passion in. But as soon as scientific phenomena steps in, I can never seem to be able to link that and the real world together. Because to be honest, these names and concepts are not real. Take molecular biology as an example. Many of the protein complexes and cascades that attempt to explain why things happen are just names that we humans assign to naturally occurring phenomena. These names hold no significance. If you are able to recite the processes that occur in G protein signalling, and all the MAPK cascades, then good job. But if that factual information is not applied through what you create, they hold no meaning. It is a hammer that never touches a nail. It is simply restating what another person has created.
Yes, knowledge you can obtain from reading textbooks and completing the homework. But long term storing and useful application of this knowledge is far more important and this is done through action- through creation. This is how YOU add meaning to that knowledge. The only way that the laws of science will ever be useful is if you make use of them, they are obsolete without its application.
True intelligence does not come from your ability to state facts out of nowhere. It comes from the skill in able to integrate that knowledge into action and 'real life'. This, to me, is what it means when they say that ignorance is bliss.
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