My Personal Classroom

My Personal Classroom

Experience is a great teacher. We all know that. Unfortunately this does not necessary mean that we are always able to extract the right lesson from every experience.

How then do we ensure that we gain the most from each and every experience that we encounter in life?

The best way to learn is to consciously play both the roles teacher and student. Learning and teaching are inseparable experiences--we absorb our lessons better when we learn with the intention to teach.

If you go to a lecture with the intention to just listen, your mind will probably be able to absorb 50% of the content; but if you go into a class knowing that you have to immediately relate what you have learnt to a friend who is not able to attend, your mind functions in a completely different mode: you have to understand and also figure out how to articulate what you have understood. That makes you learn much more effectively.

Similarly, we understand something better if we immediately apply what we have learned. Teaching is just another form of application. Learn and teach. If you have no one to listen to your teaching, then teach youself!

Which is why I am always in a "preaching mode" here in my blog :-) It is certainly not my main intention to dispense my half-cooked words of wisdom to the world--I am merely trying to learn and internalize what I'm writing about. I turn my life's experiences into lessons and then attempt to lecture myself into understanding.

My blog is my personal classroom, not a public rostrum. Here I am both the teacher and the student. But anyone is welcome to join the class, if they are inclined to do so. Well, oftentimes the student can also teach the teacher a thing or two. Learning is a two-way street.