I was thinking about this last night…<\/p>\n
In my earlier years in school (e.g., first grade), I thought of learning as facts. George Washington was the first POTUS<\/a>. (And, a more handy acronym, the SCOTUS<\/a> is the nation’s highest court.)<\/p>\n Of course, it’s not even true to say that all I was learning was facts, but it’s how I thought learning should be measured. Around that time I was also finishing up mastering the skill of reading, and learning arithmetic.<\/p>\n Nowadays, though, I learn very few facts. (In Forensics we learned that a person who has been poisoned usually has purple fringing (but not chromatic abberations<\/a>…) on their extremities, especially fingertips.) But mostly, I’m learning concepts and strategies. Last night we talked about the Blue Ocean Strategy<\/a>, for example. The “facts” might be what a “blue ocean” is, versus a “red ocean.” But I’m not here to learn colors. The real learning was the concepts and the strategy.<\/p>\n The problem is that I haven’t quite gotten over that mindset that learning is measured in facts, and I’m not learning a lot of them. It also makes the “So, what have you learned?” question harder. “Well, a person who’s been poisoned may have a purple tint in their extremities,” but that’s not really going to impress people with my business knowledge. (I’ll be sure to bring it up an interview. I hear some businesses these days are looking for cutthroat people.)<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was thinking about this last night… In my earlier years in school (e.g., first grade), I thought of learning as facts. George Washington was the first POTUS. (And, a more handy acronym, the SCOTUS is the nation’s highest court.) … Continue reading