Signposts in the wilderness of learning

Editor
People who have wanted me to succeed have often also wanted me to believe that learning is easy. I have been a learner for almost four decades now.
However, in all these years, I have not been able to find this to be applicable to my own situation of learning. Instead, I have found an uncomfortable discord between what these people say and my own experience.
However, as years go by, such a veil of ignorance has gradually disintegrated.
I have learned that learning is no easy walk in the park, and that it is a test of character.
I am therefore writing this letter as a message of assurance to all those who might be finding learning as difficult as I am still finding it today, not to be despondent and be lured into thinking that they might be experiencing wrong feelings. The uncomfortable feelings that we often experience as learners are part of how people who succeed in the game of life sometimes have to experience.
These are the feelings that we should experience as a living testimony that we are actively participating in building our lives.
During my years of learning, I have learned a salutary lesson that, whenever I engage with life,
I need to begin with the end in mind. In my uneducated opinion, beginning with the end in mind means that I have to imagine what I want to see or experience when I eventually reach the end. For instance, I have to decide when exactly I want to sweat:
Do I want to sweat now, and celebrate at the end of the year? Do I want to sweat later, and harbour regrets about the lost opportunities that I could have used to make something good out of my life?
However, I have also learned that beginning with the end in mind is not enough. It needs to be coupled with taking specific actions – doing and not doing particular things – in order to move from my imagined reality to my lived reality. That is, if I want something good in my life, I have to commit to the particular rules of the game of life in learning, including but not limited to the following:
Start doing your work on the first second, first minute, first hour and first day of school. Remember, procrastination is the thief of time, and that lost time can never be recovered.
Have a clear plan on what you need to do, how you need to do it, when you need to do it, and why you need to do it. This implies that you need to have and commit to a clear plan of action.
Push yourself. You are a human being; not a wheelbarrow. So, you do not have to wait to be pushed like a wheelbarrow. This is your life. You must take the trouble of driving and leading it.
Be prepared to teach yourself, and expand your horizons more than your teachers are able or willing to.
The world of learning is wide; explore and indulge in the depth.
Complain, but do not spend the whole of your life complaining. Instead, find out exactly what needs to be covered, and get on with your work. Obsess more with the amount of work you need to cover than with the time you have to spend doing your schoolwork.
Make notes and summaries in the form of colourful spider diagrams, mind maps, flow diagrams, and spray diagrams. Remember that it is nearly impossible to have a complete picture of what is going on in a subject using notes only.
Get into the habit of making your own notes from the book, internet sources, and educational newspapers.
Do whatever you do with an intention of excelling and impressing yourself. So, take time to praise yourself when you have done excellent work.
Choose your friends wisely.
Be prepared to lose some of your friends, and do not blame yourself for losing friends who want you to slavishly keep friendships with them.
Remember that all of us have twenty-four hours a day – you included. Success begins with effectively using the twenty-four hours in a manner that locates you in a position to achieve what you have set for yourself. Spend your time on the most important things in your life.
Take good advice. Listen to the wise voices, including your own internal voice – your conscience.
Often, people who end up living a good life take and implement good advice.
Be positive about what you have to do; it is a necessary pain towards what you want to achieve in your life.
Hang in there!
Success is not an uninterrupted advance; it is not an unbroken chain of victories. It is a mixture of trials, failures and breakthroughs.
See your life as a project, with various stages, each of which needs to be successfully executed for the subsequent one to happen successfully.
Hard work has not killed anyone; it won’t kill you too. So, work as if it is your last day of living.
Compete with yourself. Always work to outperform or beat your previous record of performance.
As you may have gathered, learning is intimidating and overwhelming, but is not necessarily a leviathan (a monstrous beast) that many of us think it is. Instead, it is a stepping stone to our bright future – an ineluctable necessity for our existence and growth.
It serves as an elevator to take us to greater heights. We just need to get into that elevator, and enjoy the joys and pains of the ride. Success is impossible with imagination only; it is possible only through a combination of imagination and goal-directed action.
Jabulani Ngcobo
Mr Ngcobo works in the Department of Basic Education: Planning and Delivery Oversight Unit, and is writing in his personal capacity.