Ahem, I mean welcome to Opal Light! Sorry for shouting at you so soon, I'm over-excited.
Opal Light is my second attempt at a blog, I loved the first one but just lost momentum 6 or 7 posts in. Something that will not happen this time, pinkie promise!
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| (Not mine) Oh god, these are amazeballs notes. I almost feel like going back to Uni to recreate these. Nah. |
I used to be pretty good at studying independently, at least that's what I used to tell the lecturers at college and uni when the 'absent AGAIN' emails come rolling in. (As much as they say you can't learn from the powerpoint, it's certainly doable). But that's when I'd be doing it hardcore, in a desperate attempt to prove my professors wrong. Sparkly pens, write it all out, write it again, make quiz cards, boom.
But now I have no academic reason to read books for the purpose of learning anymore. And, as much as I used to moan, I miss it! I go to the library and get 10 books a time with every intention of educating myself on something completely new. Out of the ten books, I read about two of them. Lets say each book is 80,000 words. So that's 160,000 words that have entered in my head. And what happens to them? It goes like this:
Picture a pub scene, pints on the table, the mood is light. Someone brings up something about learning new things and neurons. I think, I've read a whole book on this and how the brain works! I can wax lyrical! I was amazed when I was reading it, I can make everyone as blown away as I was! I can finally share this knowledge!
'Yeah, I read about that! The brain makes those new things every time and it has little thingymajigs that connect and they studied it at, I can't remember, and the study showed the more we do something, the easier it gets, and...'
...and then I trail off because I have realised I can't add any real information and everyone looks a little bit disappointed with my enthusiastic vagueness. 80,000 words of amazing, delicate, accurate, provoking information, and I sound like someone who read the blurb and popped it back on the shelf. I came across so many fantastic facts that could be so applicable to my life, and the only thing I can take away from it is 'dude, the brain is cool'.I do it with ted talks, life hack articles, the news, other blog posts. The amount of information we get is over-whelming, but it's so annoying when you feel it is all so relevant and you're never going to take it in. The end result is a very, very general idea about the topic.
I got a book out about meditation and wanted to retain all of it (probably because I'd come across numerous articles about it, and after lots in-depth research, I could come to the detailed conclusion that meditation = good). So I started, in Uni style, to just copy it out using sparkly pens. After sheets and sheets of A4 full of my writing, and considering the rich history and culture of meditation, I thought I had lost the point a bit. (And I can't remember any of it, who heard of meditation quiz cards?)
For the sake of my pub conversations, how do you read information for fun, and make sure it actually goes in?
P.S The brain book is The Blissful Mind by Shanida Nataraja. I don't do it justice as it is brilliant to read!
