experience learning

Learning is something I find you cannot escape. It is all around you and in every experience.  I have learned a lot from many different experiences. I feel like that is how a majority of your learning is gained and maintained, through experiences. You can sit in a class and be taught something over and over again but until you actually experience it for yourself to you fully grasp, appreciate and exemplify whatever is being taught and that is true learning.

To answer that question I simply reflected upon my own life. On a lighter level I reflected upon when a teacher may tell me something in class, for example, don not put a comma there but until I actually had to type the paper on my own, determine if a comma went somewhere and then got a poor grade back for misplacing commas I would learn from that experience to first to take heed to the words my teacher says and second to place the commas where they rightly belong.

But on a more personal level I looked back upon the time in my life where I did not to what I was taught because I had yet to learn it. For years I had been taught through teachers, relatives’ even books that lying only makes things more complicated. That one lie only leads to another and another until your stuck in a mess of lies. This being taught to me was put to test when one day I said one lie. The days proceeding I was forced into conjuring up further lies to mask to first lie until months later I was in a web of lies and had no other choice but to finally tell the truth. Although all those years prior to this messy little lie I was taught not to do that even shown examples of why and what it would cause, it was not until I actually experienced it all for myself that I truly learned what lying is and why we should not do it. I experienced the true fatality of a lie first hand and had to forge my way through the lies all by myself. This experience not only taught me not to lie but I in turn learned why not to, what is does, how horrible it is and it developed me into the honest and transparent person I am today.

I do find that things learned through experience change your worldview. If you are made to live in a slum in Africa suddenly, I am sure; your worldview on poverty would change.  I do confess that everyone’s experiences are different, they have different affects, play different roles and for different results. Learning is not restricted to a certain classroom or certain class of people every single human being has the ability to always be changing and learning and through experiences day in and day out oftentimes cannot escape this learning experience called life.