In Defense of my Dumbness

Ruby, my psych batchmate now a psych professor in USC, talked to me in passing her upcoming research/study to be published as part of a book, Asian Learners (or sounds something like that).

So we proceeded to talk about how people learn, or how some are lazy to learn or just stop learning; or as we would say it's not that he's not learning or he's lazy; it's just that it's his way of learning.

So I told her that I just realized, now i'm old, that i have a different way of "learning." And, i thought, lookong back, that it's better that i should have not proceeded right away to college, and instead go get myself into different odd jobs.

I realized it when i got frustrated why i have a hard time understanding instructions, while Mark can have it a breeze. I cannot, for unknown reason, easily connect the different steps. That's when i recall my mother's frustration of my cooking skills. It's because i cannot follow instructions step by step. It's just later on, i realized that i'm not dumb; it's just my brains process things differently. And, i know a lot of other people are like me or each individual just process things differently.

And, i guess this is one of the reasons why i think the standard traditional educational system may not be the be all and end all on how to get "educated."

Anyhow, i tend to learn "backwards." I'm not being carefree or risk-taker when I usually just "jump without thinking" which translates to why I can be clumsy. I mean i need to burn the food, so that I go back and then i understand "why" the steps in the instruction is like that. Gets?

So that's why looking back, i should have burned myself in different odd jobs before i go (back) to college so i have a better understanding of why those "degrees" are there.

I mean "education" is indeed exPAINsive.