Back to School

Even though I don't go to school myself, my son is still in high school, so our year still revolves around the school year.  Summer is drastically different in our daily life than school days, as neither of us are naturally morning people, so when given the chance we stay up late and sleep in.

But even though I'm not a morning person, I am definitely more productive early in the morning.  Sometimes I can get things done at night, but I'm more likely to really get the nose to the grindstone before lunch time.  So in the summer, when I pretty much don't wake up until lunch time, less things get done.

That means that when my son goes back to school, it often calls me back to my own studies.  I am very much a scholar at heart, I always enjoy learning things, and can't even imagine not having books to read or subjects to study.  It is one of the things I love about Paganism:  that there is this call to uncover more, to learn more and to continue to grow.

There is a fine balance that comes with study.  Our brains need some amount of time to absorb information.  If we just keep trying to add more stuff, without ever taking breaks, it is very easy to burn out. 

I get this with new projects.  When I get interested in something, it is very easy for me to obsess about it.  If I start learning about a new thing, I can dive in deep, spending hours a day just trying to find out as much about it as I can. 

This sometimes leads me to becoming burnt out on a subject.  I'll have spent a week in intense study, have read everything I can get my hands on and made copious amounts of notes...and then I'll just be so sick of it I can't even bring myself to finish up what I was working on.

Often, when I hit this point, I have to walk away from a subject, and sometimes that will lead to HUGE gaps where I don't really work on that subject at all.  I did this with chakras.  I spent days reading about and making notes on the root chakra, but I couldn't bring myself to go beyond it.  I still have my notebook with pages of notes and pictures involving the root chakra...and nothing more.

But more often, I end up taking a break and coming back to my study.  I have done this with runes many times over the years.  Typically when I find a new book or website that explores the runes in a new way, I'll dive in and spend some time looking at things from this new perspective.  But then, once I've consumed all the new information, I'll let things set and not really work with them for a while.

When I do come back to my studies, I find that not only am I mentally refreshed and eager to start learning again, but that I have really internalized things that I have learned.  I will find myself pleasantly surprised to realize that I can recall things without trying or really having to think about them.  The information is now a part of me, and not just something I took notes on.

The really interesting thing is seeing which subjects come 'naturally' to me and which I am most resistant to.  I have never really been good with time or dates, so things like astrology is a huge struggle for me.  I still couldn't tell you what sign someone is if you told me their birth date (without looking it up).  And this even extends to me not being as familiar with the qualities of each sign (it's like the fact that there is a date involved means that I just block all associated information).

On the other hand, stories work very well for me.  When I know the story behind a thing, I can remember it.  And I start to work more information into the story, so that thinking of the story makes me recall even more.

This is why it's so very important in my own studies for me to look into the why's of things.  Learning legends and myths or how a belief evolved is vital to my being able to recall the actual information later.  Stories make things real to me. 

And I think that is a very important thing to know, no matter what your learning style is.  We all learn slightly differently, and figuring out the way you learn best means you won't have to work as hard to learn things.  This may mean trying different styles of working with information until you find what works best for you.

When I am first learning something I prefer to have a written record of it.  This way, I can spend as much time as I need with the information, quickly and easily reference points that I might want to compare and skim through things that are repetitive.  Once I have a basic grasp on a concept, I might enjoy a video of it, especially if it is something that is very visual (like a how-to on making an object or actually doing a ritual), but I really dislike trying to understand the basics from a video. 

I know some people who are the exact opposite.  For them, videos are much more relatable and trying to figure out information from a block of text is tedious.  This is why I think it is very important to know how you personally absorb information best and to find ways to work within that.

Sometimes this means that you have to translate one type of information into another.  If the only source I have for a subject is a video, I may need to make my own notes off of it, then study my notes to actually figure things out.  If you learn best through hands on learning, and you can't find a workshop for the thing  you want to learn, perhaps you can try making a study group and finding other people who want to learn as well, and you can all try it out together.

I think that sometimes people have bad experiences with school as a child, and they think it means they aren't good at learning things.  But I think that most of those bad experiences are based on trying to learn in a format that doesn't work for you.  Instead of thinking about the things you struggle to learn, think about the things that are easy for you to learn and figure out a way to use that knowledge to your advantage!

If you have always had a really easy time picking up sports, you may be a physical learning, needing to actually do things to learn them.  If you struggled memorizing poems but had no problem picking up new song lyrics, you might be an audio learner (or it could be the music that is key for you).  If you are always frustrated with doing things for the first time but once you figure it out you never forget how to do it, you may be a repetitive learner (also sometimes known as muscle memory).

So when you are struggling to learn something you need or want to learn....take a moment to consider why it is so hard!  Perhaps you need to just take a break and let it all sink in.  Perhaps you need to adjust your study method so that it fits your learning style better.  Perhaps you need to look at the information from a different angle.  But instead of getting frustrated and beating your head against a brick wall (or book!) try something different and see if that helps!