I was a very good student up until high school. I was pretty smart and could coast through classes with little effort and get an “A.” That is what is expected of a student isn’t it? I got an “A” so my job was complete. Did I learn everything? Well, I did in subjects that I cared about, but I didn’t really care about the grade in those classes.
Things changed when I got to college. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with my life, but since I had done so well in high school, I took a bunch of advanced classes to start off my year. Well the whole experience of college was much more exciting than advanced classes, and I was able to coast through the first round of test. I just let it ride the rest of the semester. It wasn’t until the end of the school year that I realized that I had enough knowledge of the subjects to get me through the first round of test, but not much more after that. Grades plummeted, and I was at a crisis in my life. For all of my life I had been pursuing a grade (with little effort), and was happy with that. Didn’t really have much of a life so the effort wasn’t really much of a problem. Then I was in a place where the rest of my life was more important than school, and school suffered.
It wasn’t until much latter that I got my life back on track. I found a field that I was really interested in and started working for the local PBS station. There was so much to learn, but I willingly put in the time to do the work. Not only willingly, but passionately. I picked up as much as I could from the people around me, read books, trade magazines, researched everything that I could on the web, and tinkered around with real equipment. I look back and am amazed at what I was able to learn (and am still learning everyday).
I went back to college part time while I was working at the TV station, and I did a lot better. I was taking a few classed in the field I had chosen, and I loved them. I was even able to force myself through the general electives that I was taking. It was tons of work, but I was learning a lot. Then I ran out of courses that related to TV, and I quickly lost momentum. I still have eight elective courses left, but not much desire to go back and take them.
So, why is it that I will spend sixteen hours a day working on something that I find interesting and useful, but have difficulty with the easy (boring) classes? It is because I am a needs based learner. I talked about this in my interview over in Qatar. There is so much stuff to learn and when I am faced with a new challenge, I always put in the work to learn the material. I am not one of those students that learns for the sake of learning. I need to use it for something.
That model doesn’t really fit in to today’s educational system. I read a passage from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I think that I would do really well in a place that can help me to learn what I want to learn with out the need for grades and degrees. I am more than happy to take industry specific seminars, online training classes and the like.
It might seem unlikely that I have worked for most of my adult life for universities (and just got a new job with one), but I do love the environment. There is something energizing about students that want to learn. Some, not many, have the same passion for the field as I do, and I love helping them learn as much as I can. I am not usually in an official teaching position, but more of a mentoring role for people who want to know. I was doing projects and was willing to work with students who wanted to learn. I think that they get a lot out of a real world experience. I know that is how I learn, and I hope that I can bring a little of that to my students.