I Am Not Sure I Like Learning

Learning is fundamental to our growth and development as human beings.  Throughout every stage in our lives we are constantly learning and evolving whether we like it or not.  We learn in the educational sense, at school, but we learn (arguably) even more in the “outside world” when we interact with other people, in certain circumstances, scenarios, and depending on where we live and what stage we are in our lives.  It’s endless.

I have been out of school for awhile now, about 15 years now I think.  And while I have picked up some books since that were “technical”, it has been a long time since I have really had to or have chosen to learn something new in the legal field.  My work put me on a project where I realized I was in over my head.  I thought I knew what was doing and was diving in to the work, only to realize I didn’t have the basics down yet.  I struggled but I knew I had to stop and go back to the ABC’s and just learn the fundamentals (read case law, statutes, and supplements) so that I really understood the public policy and the inter workings of the topic I was working on.  It took me a long time, and I am ashamed to say, there were tears and some major frustration.  I felt like my brain really hurt and my eyes were crossing.  I was fighting it pretty bad.  But once I went through the process, as you can imagine, it was much better.

I am not a good learner!  I don’t really like the process of learning (and making mistakes), I like just knowing and doing.  What is wrong with me?  That’s not even possible no matter how much of an expert you are at anything, you can’t be a master all the time.  Things change and there will be mess ups.  It’s pretty incredible to see kids and how open they are to learning new things, questioning things, and how often they make mistakes but get right back up again.  I will be forced to learn whether I want to or not, so I should embrace it!