As an individual, learning has always been easy for me because I have fast assimilation, retentive memory and a photographic memory. This simply means that it is easy for me to understand what I have read, I don't easily forget what I have read and I don't forget what I have seen. Among it all the one I cherished the most has always been having a photographic memory.
I don't really know how to explain it scientifically but this is how it works, imagine being in an exam hall answering questions but you did not read a particular topic but you remember flipping through the pages where the topic was. The fact that I flipped through those pages without reading them, my mind allows me to go back to that moment when I was flipping those pages as if I'm watching a movie. By doing that I get to notice things that I didn't read but I have seen. Sometimes it feels like I'm reading the textbook while I'm in the exam hall.
Though after I discovered how my mind process imagery, I spent time to nurture the skill. All this has really helped me a lot through all the stages of acquiring formal education. I remember during my HND 1 second semester we did statistics which is considered a borrowed course for mass communication student. Imagine a mass communication student doing statistics, it was so frustrating. The most annoying thing about this course is that it has a lot of formula that is attached to each topic. Everyone was lamenting about how hard it was for them to assimilate the formulas, I knew it will be a little difficult but I was not scared because I knew what I was going to do and I believed in myself.
On the night before statistics exam, everyone was panicking. A lot of my friends went to sleep over and some went to tutorial but I didn't. I knew I need two things, silence and a lot of food. I refused to allow anyone sleep over and I went out to buy food, most especially Suya {Roasted meat}. When I got back, I took my statistics text book and went through it page by page like I was reading a story book, it was not as if I was reading it word for word, just making sure my eyes scans through every words in a page. It was weird thing to do but I knew how my brain works.
On the day of the exam, everyone was looking so serious because they have crammed a lot of formulas, so thay can't afford to do anything that will make them forget but that wasn't the case for me, I was busy jumping from one sit to another gossiping. I'm sure some people would have thought, "this guy is not serious with his life".
Immediately the exam started, just as we expected the questions wasn't funny at all but for the first 20 minutes I entered the exam hall I did not attempt any question, I just kept writing each formula for all the questions asked at the back of my answer booklet. Since all the formula is sorted out, answering the questions became a lot easier. I ended up collecting extra sheet in the exam hall and I managed to attend to the questions I needed to answer before the time runs out, in fact I came out earlier than expected.
Speaking something that was easy for me to learn, well, I wouldn't say I learnt it, it just kind of happened. There are things we learn not because we are want to but because our survival depends on it. I have said it many times that I had issues expressing myself as a kid, I can be categorized as an introvert but it was more extreme. I couldn't find the right words for me to illustrate the exact way I was feeling. It was as if there was no word for it. This really affected me a lot as a child, I don't relate with people because I felt they wouldn't understand.
The only way I could express myself was through writing but it wasn't the regular type of writing like writing a dairy, It was more like a poem but I didn't know what it was, neither could I comprehend the complexity of literary writing. I just knew I was writing something only I could understand and relate to. By the time I was in Senior secondary school by then I have already written a lot of poems, that was when I discovered what it was because we started taking literature classes.
Whenever we were given assignment to come up with a literary writing, I just modernize one of my poems and submit. My literature teacher always wondered how I knew how to write poems but I couldn't give her any logical explanation. I remember those days whenever I'm called to read my poems in front of the whole class, it was really hard for me to do but my literature teacher kept encouraging me so I did and I'm quite sure I made a lot of ladies blush.
Over the years I got better at writing poems by learning the basics and application of figures of speech, it was easier because I already knew how to put the words together so I didn't learn how to write poems, I learnt how to get better at it.
Despite all my learning abilities that aided my capability to learn, there is one thing in particular that I was quite sure that I was never going to know a thing about it but I did. I'm one of the most curious beings on earth which is why I always strive to learn things even if I don't need it but then I realized that if I'm not curious about something it makes it almost impossible for me learn.
Definitely my learning abilities depends on My interest. I have known about crypto for years but I tried as much as possible not to have anything to do with it. The whole concept of crypto has a way of disorientating my brain, the complexity of it was something my brain could not comprehend for a long time and what made it worse was that, I had no interest in it.
There comes hive blockchain that changed my perspective of crypto. The primary reason I decided to join hive blockchain was because I wanted to have a place I could publish my poems for others to read but gradually I discovered there was more to it than a writing platform. Eventually when I discovered how complex it was including the crypto aspect of it, I kind of abandoned by hive account for almost two years before returning back to it. It kind of took me awhile to develop my interest in crypto which happens as a result of my consistent usage of hive blockchain.
This write-up was inspired by weekly featured content titled A Learning curve in hive learners community.
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