The Skills of Learning

Seeing too many beans!? Haha, click on the pictures above to view the full versions. Nothing much to reflect on this evening's exam dinner. Perhaps its meant for those who are taking exams not ppl like me, haha. Spent most of time talking to this yr1 junior and his friend, telling them the benefits of joining BS.

When i was struggling with my FYP one yr ago, I was very concerned with getting the right results from my expt that i constantly went to bug my professor for verifications. He got annoyed and told me that he wasnt interested in my expt results at all. Instead, he is more concerned with my approach towards my project. In other words, he wants his students to pick up the skills of doing research, instead of getting the right results.

His words reminded me of a talk/workshop that covered the mentality of students towards university education. When I was in my sec sch and jc days, there were kinda 2 opposing mentalities towards education adopted by students. The first one is to study for good grades and getting good jobs. The second one is to study with interests. But these are no longer the primary concern for ppl nowadays. Most have gone beyond the box in their thinking, and are now focussing more on learning skills, rather than learning the subject contents and matters.

I recalled a few of my course mates who were multiple dean listers. I realised that their good results were not jus attributed by their passion for the subject matters and their diligence, but MORE of their skills in identifying the right approach for each and every different module. I remembered one of them once told me in NUS yr2 that he has finally 'found' the right approach to study one of the module. I was then pretty puzzled and thought 'shouldnt it be the same for all modules?' I realised pretty late that i am indeed SLOW in this aspect.

True enough, what we study in sch is often insufficent and non applicable to our jobs (in the future), esp in the engineering fac when the field is so damm wide. Most of those technical companies provide trainings for fresh grads, showing that the 'skills of learning' is even more important, rather than the limited subject contents we have picked up from our pathetic modules.

A NUSBS snr was crying out loud a few yrs ago that ppl nowadays do not study with interests. He looked down on these ppl and even criticised our education system a failure. But he din realise that most of his peers have already gone beyond that phase. While its impt to study with interest, the others have also realised the importance of picking up skills, not jus technical ones, but those skills tat come in handy when we approach new problems/projects.

To me, though i din pick up much technical skills from NUS, but i guess the few yrs of tough trainings to overcome modules and projects have kinda given me ample confidence in my first job, to pick up new skills and projects that are totally irrelevant to the things i studied in NUS.