Learning at it's best

Everyday at school/university we thought we are learning, but the truth is we are not. 

Learning is a cognitive process where the brain processes things that we see and feel and identifies them to make us understand how things happen. The brain itself is a marvelous gift from God and/or your parents, depending on how religious you are. 

Let me first show you how a brain would work when it is not learning, but merely absorbing the information. 

dots representing the information absorbed by the brain, as if they are non-related to each other. 

On the other hand, let's take a look on how does the brain perceives as it learns. 

dots are interconnected between themselves, showing great deal of relation.

I'm sure you know the feeling of when you figure something out and you'll be like having a working lightbulb over your head. That is what I call learning. We could stuff our brain with literally anything given the time and patience. Yes, sure, definitely, it can do that. But what's the point? You'll forget it later. Can you recall the names of the Residents in the four states? Well, I know Birch's one at Perak.

What I am trying to say here is that we should change our perspective of how learning should be done. It is not by memorizing, but by understanding. My CNC (Computer Numerical Control) lecturer once said in his first class with us; "You don't need the results (of some operation). What's important is the process. Once you understand the process, you can produce the results anytime.". That's more or less his words. It is just like how PhD and Masters students roll. The answer is not important, what is important is the steps working toward that answer. Damn, how I like this idea. 

"Memorizing is a short term solution, a battle winner; not the war hero."

One thing that always made us back down from learning is time. It is much more convenient to just memorize instead of putting real effort and real time in understanding to learn. It will take more time to really understand a concept, but just matters of seconds to memorize it. Nonetheless, we loved to take the easy way, don't we? Memorizing is a short term solution, a battle winner; not the war hero. 

By all means, I am just sharing my opinion on how things should be done. I have seen too much people, unable to put their brain in a proper learning process (including myself sometimes). I am too, working towards my way to obtain a proper learning process whenever I could. Learning takes time, but the reward would undoubtedly be handsome.