Guide to Learning: Introduction

Motivation

During my upper Secondary School days and Junior College days, my classmates have been saying to me things like "Why are you so free to mug all the time?", "Don't you have life? Stop mugging!" and "Don't lie, I know you study all the time". In JC 2, people started asking me for my technique of studying. I remember clearly that my answer was a few words, "I just study normally lor, nothing special." Some of them just kept quiet, while others would comment that I was trying to hide my "secret recipe". The truth is, I really did not know how I study to achieve slightly better result than many of my schoolmates. Is it that I really do not know or that I was just plain lazy to give a second thought on my so-called techniques?

When I was in National Service after JC, I started to give some thoughts about it. Is my way of studying really a "secret recipe", or is it just a normal way which everyone follows, just that I had more luck since my upper secondary days?

Having been blessed with being able to enter all the good schools (I knew about my acceptance into NUS during the early months of my NS days), I thought about what my friends from my previous schools said and thought it would be good for me to really think about it and write my technique down.

I started this blog in my NUS days, wanting to just pen down whatever technique of learning I could thought of (yes, I did not start in NS because I was just plain lazy to think and write after a full week of physical training in camp). This blog was also meant to serve another purpose, and that is to record down what I have learned (you would have known about this if you have read About Me).

Of course, you would have realised from my blog history, my plan failed terribly because I was not focus on this at all. I held myself back by telling myself that learning how to learn was useless. Writing down how I learned was redundant. Who really cares? Even I myself at that time did not care. To me, learning was just three things: read, understand, apply. We learn how to build assemble circuits, we learn how to do triple integration, we don't learn how to learn these stuff.

Here I am again!

Now that I have worked for more than a year, the thought of writing down how I learn came back again, stronger than ever. Throughout this one year plus, I started my own company which I failed, I gave tuitions which I consider was quite a success, I am currently holding a great job, involving both operations and technical fields. Although the journey has been short thus far, it requires me to learn, and learn more than what I had to learn in school, to learn faster than my speed in school. This reinforces the thought that penning down my technique may not be a bad idea.

This post marks the starts of a series of posts which I, Li Minghui Samuel, will talk about my own experience of learning throughout the 20 plus years of education in Singapore, from Kindergarten all the way to University, and beyond.

These posts will be based on my own personal experience and they may or may not apply to you. And of course, you may or may not agree. I do welcome feedback though, for I am still learning how to learn better. I just hope that my experience will serve as a guide to both you and me, the learners.

Please do note that some of the posts apply particularly to studies, since I do not have much experience in working. However, when extrapolated, I truly believe that they can apply to all aspects of life.