Learning The Way to Study - How The Process Works

There are literally millions of people around the world seeking a good way to study, to get better grades, to study for exams and for tips for study skills, My goal with this website is to provide you with a roadmap that leads you toward your destination.

What is Learning

Most of the world's greatest scholars agree that learning is an on-going process. They make it a point to learn something new every day-some continue the process throughout the day. Does this result in learning-overload? No it does not.

The human mind has what amounts to a nearly infinite capacity to store new materials every waking hour. Some minds are even very active during sleep, and the individual often awakens from a deep sleep with the answer he/she has been seeking.

Brain vs. Computer

Our psyche developed since birth to set specific pathways for the storage of information into the mind. Our minds are much like the database in the computer you are seeing this page. Your computer stores information by converting what you feed in, and it converts this information into bits and bites of electronic pulses.

The Brain is Like a Hard Drive

Neuroscientists tell us that the brain is much like a hard drive-but it has no moving parts. Certain areas of the brain serve as storage depots. We see, hear, smell or touch something, and the brain takes this sensory input and converts it into electrical impulses. Through unknown, undiscovered means, the brain moves these impulses to either our short-term memory or our long-term memory. As far as learning is concerned, which is dependent upon long-term storage, we have an expectation of being able at some future time to be able to find that memory and to use it.

Learning a New Process

Therefore, the way to study is the take a bit of information and write it to our mind's hard drive. But this involves learning a new process, it involves our creating a working "directory." A computer directory is described as a hierarchy of folders inside of other folders that make up the complete computer system. At the top of this hierarchy is the root directory, which contains all files organized by their location.

The computer, PC or MAC, creates a "registry" so that when we need to recover something from the computer's memory this registry finds it-hopefully. But registries tend to get screwed up as we add more and more information. To this end an entire industry has built up offering "Registry Cleaners."

And the human mind acts in a very similar fashion.

When Did the Learning Process Begin

Back in the early days of computing, the term "Garbage in-garbage out" was coined. This is even a truer statement today, due to the complexity and sophistication of today's machines. But it seems like computer science is far more advanced than human evolution. If we can believe the paleontologists, the first human like creatures, homo habilis, entered the fossil record over 2 million years ago. From that time forward, the human brain slowly grew in size and function.

How Smart Were Humans 500 Years Ago

So were humans less intelligent... say 500 years ago? Judge for yourself. Leonardo Da Vinci is considered a genius as a painter (Mona Lisa) but he once wrote, "For once you have tasted flight, your eyes will turn forever skyward, for it is there you have been and there you long to be." Di Vinci left numerous scientific sketches as part of his legacy. Did he simply dream up a glider and a kind of helicopter? Did he actually fly in one of those contraptions? The historical record doesn't say.