I spent most of my academic life believing the two were the same. If you learnt everything, you should be able to ace everything, right? To put it more explicitly, if a person liked to learn a certain subject, they were a good “Learner”. They would be motivated to study it, and therefore they would do well on assessments (of all kinds). A good student on the other hand would do well on such assessments regardless of the their passion and dedication for the subject. In fact, they may even despise the subject entirely. However, they were “smart” enough to be well acquainted with the subject to understand it main concepts and ideas. They would then understand what are testable material and content, and focus on that. By doing this, they would spend less time studying and be able to get higher marks. Simply based on the fact that there was focus and goal to study was to get high marks. Not because they particularly had any love for the subject.
I then spent a good amount of time questioning my own intelligence because I had always assumed the two were the same. I questioned my intelligence, I questioned my genes. I firmly believed for a while that I didn’t have the full intellectual capacity to ever get to the level of what I considered a “good learner”. In a way, I gave up a little, because I wasn’t being positively reinforced due to my all the dedication and handwork I was putting in.
This is going to be super cheesy, and I cringe as I type, but it was CHEM 233 that was when I finally, finally realized the difference. Only after being thrown onto the floor, and dragged across the entire campus in its cold concreteness. I use this intense analogy to describe the physical pain of failing two midterms.
Each time, I entered the exam room with a sense of confidence and grasp of the material. Each time I left feeling as if someone had personally attacked me. It was as if the board of Chemistry profs had literally sat down together and plotted ways to kill my soul. I know I’m exaggerating beyond belief, but as a person who spent more than a decent amount of the best days of their lives on a subject, I believe my drama is justified. The same story goes for my Genetics Class, only slightly less dramatic.
Again, I’m going to do the dreadful and be incredibly cheesy, but it took a lot of talking to make me finally realize that no, it wasn’t me. This whole time. It wasn’t my intelligence or capabilities. It was the way I attempted to study. I know that this is incredibly obvious to most. Teachers, parents, college handbooks and workshops constantly say this – but I never really understood. Many don’t realize it at all because they do so naturally. For me, it just meant I was a good Learner but a bad Student. But, this can definitely be worked on while the reverse can’t necessarily be said.
It was only when I sat down to study thinking, how am I going to ace this, and not how am I going to know all the material, that I did better. To be extremely explicit, I had to sit down to study with the motivation to get high marks to get better. As a student, this brings me relief. For the future, I just need to spend a good amount of time in the beginning of a course learning how to study, learning what are the most efficient note taking skills, learning which source of information to rely on.
But as a learner, who actually wants to know how things work, for the dork and nerd in me – this is quite depressing.You don’t have to even learn or understand something completely to know why and how it works. I literally memorized Claisen Condensation reaction from a video, without even having to open my textbook. I learnt the entire chapter in a few hours, by literally focusing only on the course objectives. God forbid I get curious and try to learn more than I need to know.
I guess in University, you choose a major with the passion for it. But you stay within the major by being smart and objective about it. And I really wish I could take CHEM 233 and BIO 234 again because I know, I know I could do so much better the second time around just due to this realization. I’m not upset by this revelation per say. It has to be done to distinguish the good students from the bad. Maybe being a “learner” is only an advantage because it’ll drive me towards the academia road.
ritika 