The way we learn changes. As I prepared for a presentation, I looked at my notes in which the first couple of pages differed drastically from the more recent ones. Those beginnings barely resembled an academic study. I remember that it was a few weeks into this particular graduate course that I realised how I ought and want to study the material, resulting in a template that seemed more ‘proper’. I had thought about revising the earlier material. The upcoming presentation made that agenda more timely for the topic concerns those pages.
But why? Why is there a need to make all the pages uniform? I needed to revise, to review a previously learned material to learn it better, but what caught me was this subtle direction toward the form. Which concepts do I need to re-establish in my memory? What mechanisms are most vital?—these questions were not my primary concern. They did not seem more significant than simply ‘organising the notes’ in ‘an appropriate manner’.
There is a strong sensation of accomplishment that comes with a completed set of notes or a well-annotated reading. It is almost as if the progress of learning must show itself in the marginalia. Now, this is not to say that notes or annotations are bad (regardless of efficacy, they can be quite artful to look at for the visually inclined), but if I were to be honest, I have written so much and highlighted so colourfully material that I now no longer remember. I have seen plenty of my own handwriting that I barely recognise. This can be attributed to strange gaps in memory due to other circumstances. Yet at the same time, I have had moments I can still recall vividly but with no documentation at hand.
After my first semester in graduate school, in the middle of working on the final papers for the courses I took, a serendipitous technical problem resulted to me losing all my primary files for those final papers. The primary files had my references and more advanced versions of the drafts. The only files I could save were the sketches and first drafts. This was serendipity—think of a stormy week, rain seeping through my office-studio, and over five months of what at that moment of frustration I had considered ‘hard work’ gone—for because of it, I felt liberated enough to delete a bunch of files that are probably important but no one has so far looked for. And also because I was able to recover those drafts in the month that followed.
I tried tech support first, but logistics can be tricky sometimes. There was only one other way, and though it may seem absurd (strangely so, if one thinks about it further), it is easier: I just wrote them again. I took the first drafts and tried to remember what I did for the seconds and thirds. I looked for the references again, discerning which of the ones that come up in the search were the ones I had already read and which might be a good addition that I had not seen before. I took breaks, made drawings, and procrastinated when all the thoughts in my mind were, man what the hell? No. Until enough rest brought back some clarity or, if not, then urgency from running out of time before the deadline. Those were three papers then which meant three scenarios. Whichever the case, they had been completed and submitted.
Sometimes I used to trick myself into thinking that I am doing something good when I am being ‘diligent’. ‘Used to’ because I do not think I was so aware of that before. I thought it was good thing to see a squiggly line crossing pages and finally escaping the notebook itself because that was a sign that I tried to study hard despite feeling so sleepy. Or instead, that it was the note-taking that was helping me stay awake in classes that have now completely elapse my mind as it is did my senses many years ago. Maybe it is some weird wiring in my brain that makes it easier for me to cognitively process anything when it is the only thing I am processing (and also when I actually have had proper sleep). Perhaps note-taking is important for memory and not just this barely-Platonic sense that to learn is to remember, and so if one cannot recall then they have not truly learned.
My point is, I did not need to ‘fix my notes’. My notes, the ‘good, proper’ ones were effective for when I had them—in those cases, days before a lecture, in preparation for the said lecture and for the insights to be cultivated. In the same way, the pages that were not so ‘proper’ worked for their time. Maybe one day, I would need to put those ideas in the same template as their successors. However, right now, what the presentation needs is something else. Other mechanics, so far as the presentation is concerned, are optional.
How one learns changes. Maybe some other time would require a preparation for a presentation that includes some structured note-taking. Part of learning is discerning such things, I think, that is why it necessarily changes.
Maybe that is it—the only thing that is learned: discernment, recalling which path is right/appropriate, keeping the compass of the heart aligned with the competence of the mind.