Learning How to Learn
Way back before I started my tech career, I was working in a call centre doing technical support. My partner at the time was a kind and encouraging soul, and when I had the realisation that I wanted to work as a developer, he nudged me toward doing a degree in Computing and IT via The Open University (OU). The OU is a distance learning institution based in Milton Keynes which offers all sorts of courses and qualifications, and is your main option if you want to study for a degree part-time without being required to attend a physical location.
My first module was very challenging, partly because I did it out of order. Instead of doing the "What's a Computer?" module first, I ended up diving into the deep end with a maths module, covering everything from the basics you learn at school, right up to university level. Given I'd failed maths at college, it brought up all sorts of buried emotions trying to wrestle my brain into a state where it could apply all of these abstract concepts with confidence. My poor partner encouraged me through my mini-meltdowns as I was brought to tears by the fact I couldn't make myself understand the course content yet again.
It was at this point that I realised I had never actually learned how to learn. I mistakenly thought that "learning" as a concept was pointing your attention toward information and hoovering it up into your brain, where it would sit and immediately make sense. Nobody ever told me there's quite a lot to this learning thing - you need organisational skills to create an effective study plan, the motivation to get yourself to turn up, the discipline to carry on when it gets difficult and the self-awareness to honestly monitor the journey and made adjustments as needed.
It's quite emotionally humbling when you enter into a new learning adventure and you realise just how much you don't know. It can be easy to get overwhelmed by the feeling that you'll never be able to take on all of that new information. Looking too far ahead into the future can intensify that feeling. One thing I personally had to learn was how to slow down, and focus more on what I'm trying to comprehend in the present moment. The impatience of wanting to get to the interesting part is a ferocious force when faced with the boring, dry theory you're told you need to know before you can proceed. However, skipping ahead without fully learning the foundations has stung me more times than I'd like to admit.
On a personal level, my biggest challenge has been adopting and inhabiting the beginner's mindset, which is a state of mind characterised by curiosity, comfort with trying new things and fresh, childlike enthusiasm. Somewhere along my shuffle through life, I lost my ability to experiment and make mistakes without fear, and instead internalise the struggles which are part and parcel of growth as an indicator that I am "not made for this" and therefore, should give up. Learning has made me face up to this insecure part of myself, and one day I hope I can reclaim that youthful bullishness of not giving a f**k.
In an interesting twist, not long after starting the degree which I thought was a necessity for entry to the tech industry, I ended up side-stepping into a QA Engineer role at my company. Studying on and off for many years, I made it half-way through my degree as my life took many difficult unexpected twists and turns, finally levelling out after moving cities and professions. Now that I finally achieved my dream of becoming a software engineer, nearly a decade after the idea sprung into my heart, I look at my unfinished degree, and although I feel thankful for the journey it took me on, the rest of the modules I'd have to complete look like a joyless trudge.
Will I ever complete it?
For now, my attention span lies elsewhere. Namely, the Open Source Society University, a curriculum entirely composed of free online materials providing a full education in Computer Science. The "Nand to Tetris" module currently has me messing around with logic gates in a simulator, bending my brain with boolean arithmetic and making promises that I'll somehow end up building a simple computer from these principles. How cool is that? For the first time in years, my learning journey has me lit up with excitement like a kid, and it makes returning to the OU just seem wrong.
So, who knows? But I'm damn glad that I learned how to learn.