Laziness and Suboptimal Learning

I do not practice what I preach. Well, maybe I don’t preach. But I do teach. And I do profess. Does profess + teach = preach?

You would think that after all my learning about learning (evidenced by many blog posts), that I would have learned to apply it to myself. But no! I still personally persist in sub-optimal learning because I am lazy. Admitting one’s sin is the first step towards repentance and learning, no? Now I’m preaching.

I do not practice what I preach. This epiphany revealed itself two days ago in a typical conversation with one of my students – and yes, this is the unfortunately common before-exam conversation about study habits. This student happens to be quite conscientious, and mostly applies good (or relatively optimal) studying strategies. She’s worked lots of problems (good in chemistry), but is still nervous about the exam and wants to know what else she can do to ‘solidify’ the material. We discuss several other strategies she can use. My course website also has a chunk of material devoted to “How to Study for this class [General Chemistry]” with pointers, that many students read and forget.

This made me think about suboptimal strategies that students use, such as massed re-reading or gravitating towards solving easier rather than harder problems. (For a summary of both effective and ineffective techniques, see here.) Students who try to go the easy (or lazy) route find out they haven’t learned very much come exam time. And after not doing well, I often hear the phrase “I’m just bad at chemistry”. For many years, thinking of myself as a ‘math-science person’, I bought into a related false dichotomy. My version: “I’m just bad at learning languages.” Reality: I was lazy and not willing to put in the optimal work. While I am multilingual from a young age, I hadn’t made any attempt to learn a new language since probably middle school. Until recently.

Here is my uplifting tale. Several years ago I had a cool opportunity to help start a new higher education institute (HEI) in a different country. My department and college was very supportive allowing me to take a leave of absence, and we made a big move across an ocean to a different continent. While English was mainly used at the HEI, there were other local languages. My goal was to learn the next most widely used language to interact with the locals who were less comfortable using English. With some intensive Rosetta Stone, a notepad, and a scheme of revising older material in a semi-organized way (‘interleaved practice’ for those who know the jargon), I started language learning a few months before the move. Upon arrival, I kept up my study (30 minutes a day at least) but I also watched soap operas on TV (the nightly news was much harder to follow) and made attempts to read signage and occasionally use simple phrases. While I did not achieve fluency, I was able to communicate with younger kids (simpler vocabulary, slower speech) and understand parents talking to their kids.

But now it’s time for my sub-optimal tale. I return to the U.S. disabused of the false dichotomy since I made decent progress learning a language at, ahem, a more ‘advanced’ age. Enthusiastically, I decide I should learn another language now that I’m back in the U.S. After English, what’s the most spoken language in the U.S.? That’s right, it’s Spanish. Voy a estudiar espanol (with tilde above the n). I go back to what worked the last time around, Rosetta Stone. But I don’t keep a notebook, nor do I devise my own system of interleaved practice. Also, since my daily life doesn’t require any knowledge or use of the language, I hardly practice. We don’t own a TV, and I hardly watch any Internet videos. (Shocking isn’t it? That’s because as a computational chemist and a professor, I spend most of my workday in front of a computer. So I minimize using the computer at home.)

After a while, I started to slack off, even with Rosetta Stone, although I eventually manage to get through all five levels. Some days I’m motivated to learn, other days I’m not. I feel guilty about this occasionally, and I recognize that the lack of practice and consistency (not to mention motivation) means that I’m not achieving fluency. After a while I tried Pimsleur (working my way through scores of CDs) and supplemented with some books and DVDs. But even with the books, I just read through the exercises without exercising too much effort on my part. In short, I’m lazy. I now know that I am able to learn, but I’m not motivated to put in the effort. I go through the motions in the hope that doing so will magically enable me to achieve fluency. I know this doesn’t work, but I still persist anyway. That’s the epiphany – I’m doing the same thing as some of my students! And I expect my students to learn chemistry? (In my opinion, chemistry is much more challenging than Spanish thanks to Johnstone’s Triangle.) It’s a lazy persistence. That sounds oxymoronic, but I think it best describes what’s happening.

Now, my students have more motivation to learn chemistry than I have to learn Spanish. Whose fault is that? Mine and mine. Let me explain. Chemistry is a gatekeeper class to a variety of science majors or perhaps to graduate (if chosen to fulfil the ‘science requirement’). And the pre-med students are all hoping to get A’s in chemistry. This is not easy. (The average grade in my classes is typically in the C+ range.) There are exams. Students are at least somewhat motivated to study so they can earn a ‘good’ grade and move on. I’m the gatekeeper, the setter of exams, and therefore function (for the most part) as an extrinsic motivator. Why am I less motivated to learn Spanish? I don’t have an extrinsic motivator. And apparently my intrinsic motivator is not strong enough.

My epiphanic solution is that I need to plan some sort of extended trip (not just a few days) in a mainly Spanish-speaking country. I’m uncomfortable living in a place where I’m not fluent in the language. (Short visits are fine.) Perhaps that will help me get over my ‘activation barrier’ of laziness and spring me out of my sub-optimal learning approach. What have I learned in all this? I have a better appreciation for how challenging it is for students to take upon themselves the practice of better and more optimal strategies. The knowledge of such strategies is not enough. (I know all these strategies but still do not use them for my Spanish.) Somehow I need to help them over the barrier with chemistry. In any case, I’m thankful to my student who sparked my epiphany. Sometimes in those conversations with your students, you learn more about yourself. Now, para mi, I just need to practice what I preach. Or teach. Or profess. And not be so lazy.