We are All Good Learners but Some Learning Styles are More Respected than Others
Two years ago, I was convinced I hated learning. Realizing I wasn’t willing to make the sacrifices my then manager and coworkers told me were the only path to my dream job, I started researching other careers instead. I missed the days when discussing concepts with classmates and soaking up knowledge through osmosis at meetups was seen as productive. I really hated ‘adulting’ according to my coworkers’ definition and envied my friends in artsy fields who were encouraged to find themselves, an opportunity I’d felt deprived of throughout my grades obsessed childhood and looked forward to as I started my career. Instead of license to explore, my hard work was met with pressure to specialize ASAP.
As I explored potential career transitions through networking, I realized that it wasn’t coding that was draining me but spending all my evenings alone in a cubicle, working in a silo for months, separated from the community that had sparked my passion for the field and helped me discover my strengths. The same kind of work that had become the bane of my existence was my refuge in college. Computer science gave me the social capital I’d always craved as a nerd, an opportunity to make an impact on the world. Yet, living my college dream of working at an impactful company, I felt insignificant in my immediate surroundings, convinced my strengths of ideation, collaboration, and design weren’t as valuable as I’d once believed.
Still, other fields didn’t excite me as much as mine and I didn’t want to give up on my dreams because of social norms. Meeting fellow techies who built a successful career through creativity, exploration and collaboration gave me the courage to stay where I believe I belong, even when others disagree, and to be open about how I operate best and hold out for teams that value what I bring to the table. At the end of the day, each of us has the final say on where we belong.
While psychologists and philosophers across ages and cultures have described growth as an intrinsic part of human nature, our competitive world implies otherwise, branding people as good or bad learners based on their current abilities rather than investing in their future. Since competition caters to working alone, collaborative strengths lay undeveloped or even undiscovered well into adulthood in many of those deemed most competent by the individualistic modern education system and rewarded with power to shape cultures in industry, politics, and community. Still, the connected have strength in numbers, numbers of ideas shared, lives touched in deep, personal ways, and experiences learned from. I seek to continue developing myself on an individual and interpersonal level throughout my life.
Call to action: Where would you like to belong despite not fitting the stereotypes? What are some steps you can take to get there that cater to your learning style?
