Are You Learning?

Welcome to college! Knowledge is now something you can smell in the halls, taste in the library and breath during finals. There's a specific crisp fall air that accompanies the college camps when classes resume from a summer of forgotten vocabulary, removed writing callouses and freedom from test anxiety and group projects. There's an expectation that our mind will be used in ways they haven't for awhile and as much as we complain, many of us are ready to take on a challenge. So the first day of classes begin and we meet new friends and reunite with old ones, all the while anticipating how much we will have to learn about this or that, where the majority of our homework will come from or who will make a good study partner, besides our obvious choice of the cute new foreign exchange student.
Aside from all other agendas, college is a time of learning. The truth is, everything thrives around the idea that we are receiving an education, but also learning how to exist in a world of freedom. The balance of these two purposes is what leads me to ask the question of our intentions, not only in school, but life as well. As information is now available to us in unfathomably extensive ways, I feel a need to actually step back and ask ourselves how much we are absorbing each day and whether are lives are a reflection of the wisdom that accompanies new discoveries and experiences we encounter. Are we trying find understanding in times where the right information may have some very serious implications? Are we doing all we can to learn while we still have the chance?

Learning comes in three main forms which can produce similar or drastically different perspectives on the way we interpret our world and choose to act because of it. The most obvious way our current educational system displays learning is through the use of a teacher and therefore, knowledge is received through being taught. The second form of learning is through the gathering of information and seeking of knowledge for ourselves. This is where learning starts to take a more personal turn, as the issues and topics we desire to know more about are available to us, and we purposefully pursue the understanding of such. The last, and perhaps most influential way, of learning is through experience. Experience is the key to a lasting understanding of how things are physically applied in really situations with lasting effects. Until you understand the stove is hot because you decided to touch it, the concept of getting burnt is quite hard to get your head around. In the same way, most knowledge is not fully comprehended until it is applied in a realistic situation. Of course, the best way to truly learn as much possible about a subject is by using all three ways of learning to expand your perception and awareness of all elements involved. If you want to know something, learn everything you can, test what is true about what you discover, hold onto what is true and disregard everything else.

Learning is a basic function of our humanity as well as our development and comes in a few specific stages, which can be identified by the individuals who hold the most influence over our knowledge during those periods. For my own purposes, I've deemed this process 'The Evolution of Learning' to give a better picture of the way that our ability to understand shifts through different stages of our lives. The obvious first stage of development is most affected by the parents of any person. Parents are arguably not only the most important, but also the longest lasting influence on our learning. Basic function and knowledge come directly from their teaching and modeled behavior. The choice to be a parent should never be taken lightly. From the parents, some responsibility of learning shifts to the other relationships we make during childhood. Discovery through the interaction of people at the same levels of development are essential to our understanding of relationships, community and outside perspective. The formal teacher is the next person of influence after the peer, and this becomes our first experience of intentional learning in a direct and efficient manner. While teachers may fit into the next stage, the mentor soon takes over the role of teaching an individual what they most desire to know and understand. A mentor is seen as an individual who will personally take the time to directly support and guide the growing adolescent through times of uncertainty and provide necessary clarification and well as teaching them how to thrive in a society that will continue to expect more and more of them. Past this stage comes the second more formal  teaching of a boss or leader who, most often, teaches either through example or a system of management set up to provide learning of a specific skill or overall conception. The final accomplishment of learning, comes from within oneself. This occurs when their level of respect in a society has reached the point where their opinion and perspective become valid and they are able to learn through personal experience and interpretation. Every stage of learning is inherently necessary to the success of an individual and their ability to reach the final stage of knowledge. But why does all of this matter?

Rarely does any person actually experience every step of this process without some sort of deficiency. It is because of this that we have the obligation to try and fill those gaps whenever we reach the final step of this process. And I say, the sooner the better. When people state they simply don't get why war, poverty, injustice and suffering exist, my first reaction is to question whether they are actually aware of the circumstances surrounding such. Because our American lives have been furnished with a filtered view of the world around us, we have a duty to learn what the reality of life is outside of our understanding when that knowledge becomes available to us. Ignorance is an actuality to be realized and not hidden by pride and fear of rejection. Discover what is truly happening, decide for yourself where truth and knowledge combine to affect our lives and ideologies. Are you learning about the world around you? Or are you stuck in a stage where teachers and parents are continuing to provide their biased view reality. Learn about yourself. Learn about other. Challenge your own understanding. Find out what you've been missing.