ExamineHealth

In my second year of college, I had this one instructor who was absolutely terrible. Really, the guy was downright useless as a teacher. And yet, he taught me something that proved extremely helpful throughout my remaining four years of undergraduate studies: teaching is the best way to learn something.

The reason this is true, he explained, is because in order to teach something to another person, in order to convey that information in a logical and understandable fashion, you must first go through the internal process of organizing the information in your own head, forming it into absorbent, bite-sized chunks.

 

Most people exist with information just floating around in their brains, some basic concepts over here, some connecting principles over there, etc. Their knowledge exists in fuzzy ideas, ephemeral images and gut intuition. This works pretty well for getting by. You can grasp new and related concepts, you feel as if you know what you know, and you could even give the impression of really knowing in casual conversation.

But to really KNOW something, forward and backward, like the kind of knowledge that students need in examinations or the kind of knowledge you need to show off in order to really impress your boss, your ideas need to be more organized.

Imagine that your brain is a desk drawer, and each of your thoughts and ideas about the things you know are contained on pieces of paper. Often times, people’s drawers are utterly cluttered, just piles of ideas thrown haphazardly into their brain. Then, when they go to retrieve those ideas for the big test, or during a meeting with the company execs, they have to dig and search, and when they finally find the idea they are looking for, they find it scribbled on a napkin, the sentences are incomplete, and the handwriting is nearly illegible.

Clearly this method for storing information is not ideal. That drawer needs to be processed and reorganized. There are plenty of ways to organize your knowledge, but I’ve found that one of the easiest methods is simply to go through the act of teaching that information to someone else.

The first time you learns something, you may simply scribble it on that mental napkin and throw it in the drawer. Most of the time, you can dig through the drawer, pull that napkin out, and you can read the chicken scratch just fine. But if you were trying to teach that idea to someone else, you wouldn’t just hand them that crumpled idea, would you? No. You would rewrite the idea clearly and legibly, in easy-to-understand terminology, and you would rearrange related ideas so that similar concepts are grouped together, prerequisite concepts would come before, etc.

Voila! Not only have you done a good deed by passing on knowledge, but you have done yourself a favor too. Now, when you get to that test, or sit down in front of your boss and open your drawer, you will find neatly labeled file folders, organized such that at any moment you can reach in and immediately have a coherent idea.

Also, it is good to note that individuals vary in the way that they learn best, such that when teaching other, you may need to take multiple approaches. For instance, some people are more auditory learners, and will understand simply by listening, while other are more visual learners and will understand better if they can see what is being taught. By searching for fresh new ways to explain the same concept to others, you are reinforcing the idea in your brain, making it easier and easier to pull back out at any moment.

So if there is ever a subject on which you would like to stay fresh, find someone to teach. Tutor a friend. Heck; even talking to yourself, or writing your ideas down will help you to process and organize them, reinforcing them substantially in your mind. When it comes to knowing things, organization is key, and teaching is one of the best methods for organizing your knowledge.

 

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