By the end of college, I seemed to be tired of learning. I would never admit it at the time, but my record of the number of mandatory reading assignments I didn’t do and the number of essays I half-assed, says otherwise. I think after over a decade of schooling, I was tired of splitting my time with subjects that interested me with a majority of subjects that didn’t. I was no longer hungry to learn. I was simply trying to learn and do enough to get good grades and pass the class. By the end of college, even high school, I felt like I was done with learning. I didn’t want to see another exam, textbook, or classroom again.

However, no longer than a year out of college, I developed a hunger for learning again. I read and took online classes in computer science, and now I am excited to start my day because I have another series of things to learn and challenges to face.

The online, buzzfeed-esque, quiz I had to take branded me an abstract sequential thinker and learner. For an online quiz, it was actually pretty accurate. But as with all quizzes and surveys, known for their ‘abstract’ collection of data, the results are always a mix of what we believe we are and what we actually are. Nevertheless, as long as one understands to take these quizzes’ results and analysis with a grain of salt, it never hurts to constantly re-evaluate your learning and thinking style.

I am not a big reader. I am very much a visual and learn by doing kind of learner. A “show me once, let me do it once” kind of guy. So I love the exercises and participating in every chance to build something myself. I think the area I struggle the most in, as predicted by the quiz, is the reading in great quantities. When presented with a problem, I want to read everything I need to solve it, but once it seems like I am reading something that may not have immediate relevancy to what I am doing next, I loose a lot of focus and drive. If this were me four years ago as a junior in college, it would be a problem.

However—to circle back to the beginning—I am hungry to learn this. I am realizing how valuable and interesting it is to learn a new skill, especially one that I am passionate about. So even though the long reading assignments in the textbook this week are not my strong suit, I am getting through them with the drive that brought me to the program in the first place. I am underlining as much as possible. I am doing as many recommended exercises as possible, because in the end, you get out, as much as you put in. And the best time to learn, is when you are desperate to learn

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