What Going Back To School Taught Me About Learning
I am one of those "late bloomers" when it comes to Graduate school. For better or worse, I opted to get right to work after my undergraduate studies and see what was out there. I was eager to get off campus, make some money, and start forging my own path. That path, unsurprisingly, was not exactly as lucrative as I thought it would be. Starting off at a $29,000 salary in a wholly unimpressive job was an interesting study in want vs. need, as well as a reflection on how much my identity would coincide with my work.
Stumbling along for 12 years after undergrad, for all intents and purposes, wasn't bad. There were roadbumps and, let’s face it, cliffs of professional challenges, a good amount of essential learning experiences in the working world, and a definite fair share of embarrassing, funny, and odd career anecdotes. When I started really hitting my stride, I was alternately feeling a little bit stuck. It felt like I was doing great…but only up until a certain point. I knew “about” formal business and organizational design topics, but I didn’t know the theory or terminology behind them. So, much to my parents’ surprise, I quietly enrolled in a graduate program for Organizational Learning and Change (School of Education) at Northwestern University on the north side of Chicago.
What did I learn? I learned about new subject matter. Of course I did. I learned about new industries, new career opportunities, new trends, new types of data. Perhaps what I learned the most, unintentionally, was about learning itself, and the importance of a specific kind of continuing education. Here are the top 5 learnings about learning:
Academic Writing.
What really struck me was the importance of continuing education steeped in academia. Business articles, “Pop” Business topics, Twitter, LinkedIn, and all of the other myriad of in-one-ear-out-the-other texts are fine. No, they’re more than fine, they’re great. I happily read them throughout the day and subscribe to many of them. One-off online courses, weekend-long bootcamps, and webinars are all great too. However, there is no replacement for true academic reading and academic writing. It is such a richer, more robust experience to read a set of theoretical texts by experts in the field and reflect on the history and theory that has gone into the text. Usually based in research, these academic texts provide a much deeper approach to a subject, oftentimes getting very micro on a subject. This, in comparison to a casual blogger or a marketing team’s Twitter star, looking for clicks, shares, and content development that can be summed up in 600 words or (much) less.
Soak time.
I’m not going to lie… Academic writing is dense. It is not morning-commute-on-a-crowded-train-on-an-iphone reading material, and it is not like reading a novel in bed while you fight back heavy eyelids. It is intense reading, often requiring 3 steps - (1) skim it to figure out what the heck the writer is talking about (2) read it and highlight/underline what sticks out to you (3) read the parts you highlighted again and stare off into space, thinking about it and organizing it in your own brain.
The soak time proved to be most important for me. Often doing step 1 and 2 above, and then coming back to step 3 a day or two after proved very beneficial. And - availability heuristic be damned - it gave me a chance to both find and absorb examples in daily life as I was soaking in the academic readings.
Learning alongside others.
Organizations of all kinds tout the benefits of collaboration - businesses, schools, religious organizations, sporting organizations, hobby organizations, and more. While collaboration is a whole other subject full of believers and a few disbelievers, I would like to make the argument for something slightly different - learning alongside others. While no one person in the class is an expert in all facets of the subject matter, we together as a class make up a pretty interesting little group. We can simultaneously be at all different levels and stops along our own learning journeys, but always have something to offer each other. Whether it’s a specific industry example, a different perspective, a sounding board, or even just being the person that splits their granola bar with you in a late-night class after a full day of work… it’s different to learn with someone; to learn alongside of them. Coming from an organization that is riddled with team competition, back channeling, and surprisingly few moments of reflection, it has been incredibly beneficial for me to turn to my desk mate and say “what did you think of [it]?”.
Saying it back.
“While we teach, we learn,” said the Roman philosopher Seneca. Sure, I have presented big strategy decks to C-suites, or facilitated workshops and research sessions with clients. In those settings, the focus is usually on a “big reveal” or a series of important nuggets of information that they paid big bucks for. However, there’s something different about teaching material that is intended for curious minds without the distraction of emails, disruptive technology, power plays, and business development efforts common with consulting gigs. Consistently being in an environment of learning at school (and to my partner’s chagrin, my academic stream of consciousness over many recent dinners) offers a unique opportunity to teach others in often unplanned ways. Verbally (in informal settings like study partners or small group presentations), or written (in papers intended to synthesize learnings), there is something powerful about the exercise of articulating it to others in your own way. And perhaps more than learning the material this way, I have never retained so much material than through this articulation of it to others.
POV is everything.
What I suspected grad school to be was my impression of undergrad - memorization of facts, figures, and definitions. Study “to” the tests. Write a paper here and there, regurgitating a few ideas you learned over the class. In my grad program, and I suspect many (if not all) others, the focus is on developing a point of view. It’s about applying readings to real scenarios and case studies in the workplace. It’s about critiquing academic texts, deciding what’s valuable for you, and finding parallels between theories, practice, authors, even fields of study. It’s about saying “so what?” or “ok, but what do YOU think?” after getting through a particularly heavy text. It’s about snakily picking a few favorite writers and rolling your eyes at the ones you find incorrigible. It’s what we all need to be better at - finding out own unique point of view - in the current landscape of complete and utter information overload.
Curious about what I'm studying? Check it out here: http://www.sesp.northwestern.edu/masters-learning-and-organizational-change/masters-in-learning-and-organizational-change-degree/index.html