Learning and studying

Happy January 20th. I think today is something special, but I don't remember. If it's your birthday, I'm sorry I forgot, but be sure I still love you.

On learning and studying.

My friend said to me, you never studied. I laughed and wondered what she was talking about because she was regularly there when I was studying.

I guess she meant I never studied by myself. To which I replied if I was doing it by myself she would have no way of knowing if or not I was doing it. But the truth is she was right, I don't think that during the years we were learning in close proximity to each other I ever did much studying.

I was never uncertain of what I had learned in school. So I never found any need to study it. I already knew it...why would I go about learning it again? I learned it during the teaching. My review usually consisted of taking note what part of what I had learned I would be expected to write about on the test.

For me a test was always a measure of what I had learned from a teacher. That is why no one else ever gave me tests. And so it would be in a way dishonest to study because for me it was about what I had already learned. And again if I had already learned it, why study?

You see you don't need to remember what you have learned. It is never forgotten. We don't study how to walk, we learn it, and then we don't forget it or it takes major brain trauma to forget...

School was amazing for me, because everyday I had at least 4 people who wanted to talk to me about things in the world. And I listened, I drank it up, because I knew so little about the world and well what else would I do, I was there, and they weren't going to stop talking. I think that is were I ran in to trouble in university (and with physics) the teachers didn't have things to tell me, just lists of things they thought I should study.

I didn't want to study.

I am not interested in studying. I never remember things I study, I never learn from it either. That is for sure. I think studying has all this metacognative stuff that goes with it, you have feelings and thoughts and opinions about studying. But you just learn. There is no feelings about it, it just happens. You know, do you have feeling about the fact that you know how to walk? or read? or know that spear toads have green blood. (did you know that? I did, but I don't any feelings about it. It is just something to say when I need to make a point) no, you just do it. that is because you have learned it, you don't need to think about it anymore.

I think I hardly notice when I am learning something. there is no metacognative activity when it happens. I was and am always doing something else when I am really being taught. Like a proper high school student, eating and drawing and saying eternally cool things, and making epoch changing decisions about how to talk to at lunch time and sitting on things that I would never sit on if I wasn't learning.

But this is how I feel today. That we study because we "have to" we are told to do it (and like it) so we go about it and never learn anything. Partly because it is impossible to learn something from yourself, if you manage to learn it from yourself it is because you already knew it and thus didn't need to study it in the first place. This is why I am not learning very much Japanese, because I have only studied it. Also because you study something because you are acutely aware that you haven't learned it yet, but if that is the case then how could you possibly learn it from yourself?

But I am not advising osmosis either. We have to be present, and active. I just don't want to study...that's all.