Last week, I walked into my first Engineering126H lecture virtually unaware of what to expect. I had heard so many different things about the course from students who "made it through" last year. (I put the 'phrase made it through' in quotations because that was the way nearly every student I conversed with decribed finishing the class) However, a few things remained the same throughout, the class was taught by a tough professor and the courseload was heavy....very heavy. I picked out a seat about three or four rows from the front and settled in for the lecture.
The professor began at precisely 3:30 and stated right away, (and rather bluntly) that his class was going to be like no other class we had taken before. He stressed over and over again that ENGR126 was a class about "learning how to learn". I remember this phrase causing me to chuckle a little bit the first time I heard it. What is the world was he talking about? I already knew how to learn. What did he think I had been doing for the past twelve years?
Boy, was I wrong.....
Coming out of highschool, I knew college was going to be a challenge, but I was confident in my pre-college education. There is no doubt that I amassed an enormous amount of knowledge in those twelve years, but after listening to my ENGR126 professor the past fews days, I began to ponder, did i really learn how to learn? After my first two weeks of college, I'm not so sure...
By my fourth ENGR126 lecture last wednesday, I was convinced, my professor was right. He presented some examples in class that I could immediately parallel into my studies already at Purdue. I'll give a quick example, I was doing my math homework, "Finding Area and Volumes of Curves", for my MA162 class. I remember thinking, peice of cake, i did this just last year in highschool. To make a long story short, I ended up spending a large chunk of time struggling with about half of the problems in the homework. My highschool teacher had presented a process, which in turn I learned, and then he tested us on this process ONLY. Only is a key word because I found out quick that in college, you get thrown a lot more curveballs...
The problems in my new homework sets caused me to understand the concept deeper, not just some learned and repeated process.
I'm relieved I have made this realization early in my college career, and do not have to suffer the stress and frustration later on. Although at times it seems like a daunting task, I am prepared to start over, in a sense, and RE-learn how to learn.
((Alan))
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Well...I do not know how to say this without sounding snobbish, yet I would hazard a comment. What I feel about the whole "Learning how to learn" idea is that it is overwhelmingly subjective and would apply differently to each individual. For example, for me personally, it is junk. In my High School, and here I would illustrate this with reference to Mathematics itself, there was nothing such as a 'learned and repeated process'. We were taught the topic in gruesome details (please forgive the description...but I really like to remember it this way). This is the reason why I know the entire Calculus 1 - Calculus 3 syllabus and the Math problems I am getting in college amuse me. But please do not assume that everyone studies Maths in such "gruesome detail" in India. You see I was preparing for the Entrance Examination of the Indian Institute of Technology. Some interesting trivia regarding this college:
i) Ranked No. 3 in the world amongst engineering and technology universities by TIMES HIGHER U.K..
ii)A near 1.8% admittance rate. (MIT has a 14% admittance rate.)
iii)Annual tuition fee is $500.00
Someday I would like to show you the kind of questions that come in the IIT-JEE(Joint Entrance Exam), only then would you be able to truly appreciate 'curveballs'.
I would write an article soon about the IITs, which would be part of the articles I would write about the "Transforming India". We can discuss more about this then.
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