Nobody Learns The Same

Maybe I Wasn't Brilliant. Maybe I Just Knew How to Learn.

Arsha S

8/16/20264 min read

“You always pass because you are brilliant.”

That was a common comment I used to hear from my peers.

Truth be told, I was not an invincibly brilliant academic who understood everything at lightning speed. I was brilliant enough to understand what worked for me.And that was a trick I had somehow mastered from a young age.

I did not understand everything, and I certainly did not understand every subject in the same way. If I understood what my Maths teacher taught in the classroom, I could easily doze off during Chemistry because I did not understand a thing. If I excelled in English by practising my writing every day, practising Mathematics would sometimes make me forget every formula I had learned so far.

Not all subjects are the same. They weren't invented the same way. They weren't structured the same way.

So how could I possibly learn all of them the same way?

My success formula

I figured this out quite young.

I would try different ways of learning for different subjects and even for different situations—whether I was preparing for an exam, trying to deeply understand a concept, or simply learning something on a regular day.Then I would stick with whichever method worked most efficiently for me.

Over the years, I realised that I kept coming back to six basic ways of learning:

Listening
Writing
Reading
Visual aids
Interactive learning
Real-world application

Sometimes they worked alone. More often, they worked in combination. I don't have a universal formula for learning. I don't think one exists.

What I do have are years of experimenting on myself. So, let me share what I have learned from that experience.

Physics taught me that reading can be enough

Physics is one of those subjects that attempts to explain the basics of our universe. And somehow, I learned most of it by reading.

The classroom gave me an overview of what I needed to learn. But when I came home, I would sit down and read the chapter in complete silence. That worked for me. Reading helped me visualize the concepts in my head. Once I could build those connections in my brain, things started making sense.

But I didn't learn everything in Physics just by reading.

Take dielectric breakdown. It's the process where a sufficiently high voltage ionises a material and overcomes its insulating properties, causing it to suddenly become conductive.

I remember understanding this much better when I saw "Captain Marvel" from the MCU descend to Earth and the nearby electrical lines flashing with lightning. Suddenly, something I had read in a textbook had a picture in my head.

That was a real-world application doing its thing.

English needed writing. And time.

My English improved every time I wrote. It was a subject where I had to write essays, so practice mattered. And because writing takes time, this was not something I could magically do the night before an exam. I had to practise regularly.

The day before the exam, I didn't need to write another essay. I just needed to remember what story William Shakespeare had written—if you had Shakespeare in your syllabus, you know what I mean.

Writing was the method. Revision was the final step.

Mathematics? Just let me listen.

Strangely, Mathematics worked very differently for me. My peculiar brain understood formulas only when I listened to what the teacher said in the classroom.

Once I understood the formula, I would solve a problem and somehow that was enough. I swear, there were formulas I never practiced the day before an exam. I just revised them.

Listening worked like magic in my academic life when Mathematics was in picture. And that was probably when I started realizing something important:

The method that worked beautifully for one subject could be completely useless for another.

Visual learning was everywhere

Visual learning was never really a standalone method for me. It accompanied almost everything.

I would read Physics and the diagrams in the textbook would help me understand it. Chemical formulas and organic chemistry became visual patterns to me, backed by the concepts I was learning. Seeing the structure helped me remember what I had studied.

Sometimes, the image was what helped the concept stick.

Sometimes, I simply needed another person

There were subjects that I could not understand on my own. Advanced Control Systems was one of them.

I tried learning it by myself, but it just wasn't happening. Then I learned it along with a friend. She explained it to me, and suddenly, I understood.

The same thing happened with Biomedical Instrumentation.

That was interactive learning working for me. Sometimes the missing piece isn't another textbook or another hour of studying. Sometimes, you just need someone to explain the thing in a way that makes sense to your brain.

And then there is real life

As a Senior Business Analyst who is still learning every day through experience, I have developed many more combinations over the years.

Sometimes I read something and then discuss it with someone. Sometimes I listen to an explanation and then immediately apply it. Sometimes I learn something only because I have actually experienced it.

The examples are so vast that I couldn't possibly fit every concept I have learned into one blog. And honestly, I'm still figuring this out.

Experience could be the seventh method, I guess. Or perhaps it comes under real-world application.

I'll let future me figure that one out.

So, what am I actually saying?

Classroom education makes sense. When there is one teacher and a room full of students, teaching everyone individually isn't exactly practical. A classroom is the feasible option.

But how you learn doesn't always have to be the same as how you are taught. That part is yours.

One more confession, though. I'm still bad at Chemistry. I never figured out how to learn it properly or understand it well enough to carry that knowledge beyond the exam. I still passed, because I had a backup learning method: byhearting.

Not everything has to become a lifelong passion or a deeply understood concept. Sometimes, you just need to get through Chemistry. And that's okay too.

Maybe the point isn't to become someone who can learn everything. Maybe the point is to understand how you learn.

Take a moment to look back at how you have learned things in the past. What worked? What didn't? Did you understand something better by listening, writing, reading, seeing it, discussing it with someone, or actually experiencing it?

Experiment. Try different methods. Pay attention to yourself.

Because you might eventually realise that you were never bad at learning. You just hadn't found your way of learning yet.

And perhaps, in the process of figuring that out, you'll realise something else:

You are the most brilliant person you can become when you learn to solve the biggest puzzle of all — you.