Do You Study?

“How many times do I have to study it?” Did you ever say that in school? You probably did at some point with math. I know I did with Spanish. I ended up quitting that class. But I didn’t quit because Spanish was too hard. I quit because it was too hard to sit through the same discussion of how to conjugate trabajar once again. The class was no longer servicing my desire for education.

I had a problem with languages. I love them. Linguistics and I are friends. Sure, there are times when I struggle with learning something in a language, but I get them. That makes studying languages that have commonality with other languages I have studied rather simple for me to pick up. I generally get bored when studying with others. There was another issue with studying with others. I judged them. I saw them as less because they didn’t get it like I did.

The Trap

I studied German as my first foreign language. My mother taught me a year of high school German over the summer between my 8th and 9th grade years. I took second year German as a freshman. I was in a class with mostly juniors and seniors. One was a foreign exchange student from Finland who had taken four years of German in Finland. Everyone expected him to be the one who was at the top of the class.

When we started in earnest, he fell behind. There were multiple factors, but give the guy a break, he was a foreign exchange student. I was at the top of the class, followed closely by a sophomore. I had a love/hate relationship with that girl. She was so smart! I would go home and wander over to my grandparents’ house next door to try and keep some fat on my skinny bones, and we would converse in German. That was my deal with them that year, no English. I only spoke German with them that year, except to ask how to say something for which I didn’t have the vocabulary.

I assumed I was better than others because I excelled beyond their abilities. The problem was that it wasn’t a fair playing field. I had an advantage next door. Spanish was the same issue. I already spoke a foreign language. (That was not Korean that I had as a major in college.)

Failures

There were several failure points in my life. First, the system I was using to learn Spanish was flawed, and I let that stop me. At the time, I blamed the system. It was too slow. Now, I look at it and realize that I could have learned Spanish and done really well at it. I didn’t have to rely on the Spanish class to teach me Spanish, I could have looked for other opportunities. That didn’t happen. I quit altogether.

The funny thing is that the Spanish teacher lived about an eight of a mile down the country road I lived on. He was one of my closest neighbors, and his wife was a native of Argentina. I could have arranged to learn from her, but I didn’t. Unfortunately, I chose to be angry with him over the way he taught. I built a wall. Today, I wonder what I could have become with that language skill. I won’t cry over spilled milk, but my choices changed my results.

New Opportunities to Study

I have a son who is currently living in Peru. He is learning Spanish and loving it. I am learning to re-learn Spanish. I want to understand what he is learning and trying to say. Huh, I’m having to study it over again.

In my line of business, I attend a lot of seminars and trainings so I am up to date on things that I am learning. When I leave a three day seminar, my brain is full, and I am usually charged up and ready to take action to do a lot of cool things. I try to review my notes so I don’t forget, but that doesn’t always happen. I have repeated many of these seminars. Why? Because I have found that after I have started acting on a principle, I learn a lot more the next time I go back.

Life is full of great things to learn and do. As I have worked harder at doing, I find that there is a lot more to learn, and sometimes that is right back where I started. There is a reason I read my scriptures over and over again. There is great value in the re-learning. When I take time to study something again, I get smarter.

Act So You Don’t Re-act

One of the best principles I have learned is to act instead of reacting. I go back to re-learn so I can stop re-acting what I have done in the past that didn’t work. It has been invaluable. I have changed so much in my life for the better. My family certainly likes me a lot more because of that one principle.

I hope that you are seeing that,

You can go back and learn it again and get more out of it.
By taking the time to learn something, you have more power to act.
Worrying about others’ performance actually pulls your own performance down.

As I work to remove judgement from my life, I find that there are always new opportunities to change how I am thinking, and thus how I act. I challenge you to try just one thing I have suggested. I know that it will improve your life, and the lives of those around you.

You might also want to take a look at some of my past posts that apply to this topic.

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