My (really cool) guitar teacher received a whole bunch of emails this week. Following my months of personal spring cleaning, I was feeling the effects of spring this week. And that flowed to my guitar learning as I sent him email after email speaking of songs I really wanted to learn. The excitement was palpable. And I kept checking out song lessons online to figure out if songs were easy or difficult.
He joked towards the end of the lesson that after all those emails, he thought he’d better give me lots to do this week or he’d lose me to online lessons.
My immediate response was that that would not happen in the near future. I explained to him that I’m one of those people that gets the maximum out of learning when a teacher is involved – it comes with my low attention span. I’ve written about why I don’t even attempt to be self taught these days.
That response did get me thinking though. I found myself reflecting on a normal occurrence when I’m home. One of the most important parts of my trip is to make time to visit/speak to my secondary school teachers.
And now I fully understand why. In my case, my teachers have made all the difference in the world. I’ve been fortunate to be blessed with many great ones – starting with my mom and family, moving on to my teachers in school, mentors in my workplace and close friends all through. All of the good that exists within me exists because of these individuals who have taken time to teach me things. And I wouldn’t be anywhere without them. Just a very energetic kid with a very low attention span.
Online education is a big thing these days. Many teachers have felt threatened by this new unknown monster. My view on this is simple – it will likely work very well as an accompaniment to learning but, at the end of the day, all those kids closer to the attention deficit side of the spectrum (half the population one would think..) would still need that guiding hand especially when they are young. And if you’re a good teacher you’re invaluable anyway. (The bad ones have reasons to be worried.)
It takes a long long time to learn how to learn. I think of it as developing an approach to learning. And especially for someone like me, I really mean the LONG. It’s a learned trait and is not a natural one and it is one I can apply with lots of effort to things that are really important. It has a draining effect at the end of the day as such focus/attention to detail while learning is not natural. It takes work.
It becomes very obvious when I’m working on learning something on the side. My attention just doesn’t hold. I lose interest very quickly. And this has happened twice with the guitar. It’s only over time I’ve learnt that the teacher makes all the difference in the world. When I think of tennis, I think of Chris and all of what he’s taught me. It’s similar with the guitar. A couple of years down the line, I’ll probably be good enough to pick stuff up on the guitar from a video online. It’s still a long way away..
It’s liberating when you learn these things about yourself. At least in my case, I used to look around at friends of mine who seemed to have nailed approach much much earlier in life and I used to find myself questioning my intelligence and ability to learn something or anything. It’s only over time that I’ve learnt that I’ve got a different style..
So, I’d like to take this moment and thank all of those people who’ve been a part of my life and who’ve taught me so many wonderful lessons. You might have done it as a teacher, a mentor, a colleague or as a friend and you might have done it intentionally or even unintentionally but you’ve had impact. I don’t learn these things better any other way…
Thank you for taking the time and making the effort.. I commit to passing it on.
And I couldn’t help but crack up when I saw this.
(I’m assuming you’ve seen this type of meme go around. If you haven’t, clicking this will put it in context)
A Learning a Day 