Arfa T. Chaudhary – Sep 6, 2019
^{Edited by Rabhia Shuja}

It is hard to explain how life is a learning process itself. To understand this point, it needs a flexible mindset. I also struggled a lot to be one with a flexible person and I can see myself as a learner now, as I am always ready to learn new things. It is challenging yet so soothing for me because it helps me to develop myself on a new edge. It is like, when you exercise, your body works and makes you healthy and when you learn something, your brain works and makes you wise.

For this learning purpose, I came across an online course on coursera called Learning How to Learn. This course undoubtedly has some good techniques to learn and plan things, but the voice quality of lectures was not good. I hardly understood the concept. Then I scrolled down and I found the subtitles of the video. The thing is, when I started to watch the videos again, I could only do one of the two things; watch it or read it. And since, I was unable to connect to the material, I tried to focus on as many takeaways as I could.

One of the interesting things that I learnt about was focused and diffuse learning. I also quite liked the planning technique, where you can list down your tasks or activities and follow it to avoid procrastination. Also, it was amusing to find out that mostly we procrastinate when we are afraid of doing things that seem tough or impossible. And yet, if you see it as a learner, you have to ignore this feeling and take it as a challenge and think about it positively. It will help you to learn new things and also enjoy it. 

I am making efforts to learn new things. I’m open to the idea that each process is ultimately adding to my learning. It may take time to see and absorb it, however, we all end up gaining value and discover new productive ways that wouldn’t have been clear to us otherwise.