You don't need to get it at first.
It takes time to really understand something especially when it's complex and you've never encountered it before.
Hello there. It’s Samuel. You probably already know me from my Perceptions newsletter. Learning is an alternative project in which I talk about the concept of learning, my personal experience, and various methodologies along the way. This happens to be the first issue of the newsletter albeit a brief one. Hope you enjoy it!
There’s this preconception that all learning must be immediate; that we somehow have to immediately grasp the content that we wish to learn. The truth, however, is that this rarely is so. That our priors are what largely dictate what we grasp and how quickly we grasp new information.
Time constraints from our earliest moments in school may have imbued in us the belief that somehow our brains are wired for immediacy. There may be ways in which we can learn faster. Reading out loud might as well be one way. But we learn very quickly that we may not have grasped anything at all unless revisited.
Soon, we feel downtrodden. Very often it’s the perception of our own intelligence at stake; that somehow our inability to grasp a piece of knowledge that may have taken even its initial purveyor decades to fully flesh out, is indicative of our low intelligence.
If you feel so, no matter what you may be you’re learning, realize that it simply isn’t the case.
I remember when I was initially trying to learn Object-Oriented Programming in Python. While the concept itself came naturally to me. I realized the syntax even in a high-level language like Python didn’t quite fit into the framework that had been described to me. The syntax had been so fundamentally different from the functional programming I had taught myself.
I would read over those same chapters I’d been assigned and still wouldn’t grasp it. That said, my ego as cumbersome as it were would simply not allow me to give up. I would watch MIT’s OpenCourseware video on the topic and would understand it within 15 minutes of its entry.
There is a lot that goes into understanding any concept, much of which I’ll unpack in later newsletters. But at its core, lies grit and a growth mindset.
At the end of the day, one simply has to understand that it will take some time to fully grasp a concept. That they should not give up on trying to understand or learn that which they want.
You really do not need to get it all at first.
Just be persistent.
If you found this newsletter inspiring or even slightly beneficial why not subscribe for more content?
Better yet, share it so others can receive the benefits you did because it always helps to pay it forward.
Thanks, and till next time.