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Zach
Zach

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Hack Reactor Struggles

Reporting to you live Week 3, Day 3.

I'm sitting in a morning lecture on Redux now, refraining from banging my head on the desk because: A - that would hurt and B - I'm on camera.

I would love to be able to sit through a lecture and absorb the information presented. But that's not how my brain works. I think HR should recognize that lecture-based learning just isn't for everyone.

Here are some alternatives that would work better for me:

  • Allow us to watch a re-play of this video on fast-forward. That tends to keep me more engaged.
  • Present the material in slides or some other text-based form.

This is agonizing for me, because it feels like I'm wasting time. I'm not learning. Instead, I'm falling behind my classmates who are able to keep up in this format.

I'm going to have to eat into my assignment time to get a handle on the lecture content, giving me less time for the assignment.

Ok, the lecture just shifted into demo-mode. This is more my speed. Seeing how things work, seeing how the parts interact.


Lecture-based learning really isn't for me. I struggled with it through high school and college (and before) and I struggle with it now. We're all different, and that's something that's perhaps different about me. I'm ok with that.

The frustrating part isn't the feeling of not absorbing the information. It's knowing that there are ways that do work for me. Give me the slides, give me something to read, to study. My brain can work with that.

If you don't experience what I'm describing, it could be hard to relate or understand, so here's a situation that I think is somewhat more common. You know how it can be hard to understand what you're reading when you read out loud (to a group, for instance)? How your own voice might get in the way, or you're thinking about your enunciation, or something else is preventing you from deeply connecting with the words that are coming out of your mouth? That's how it feels for me - to hear the words, to know them, and then be unable to connect them.

I don't mean to describe it as some sort of aphasia. I can drill in for periods of time and grind out the focused listening energy. But it takes an effort that is incredibly difficult to sustain, and moreover, doesn't really feel necessary to fight.

Again, there are so many ways of delivering learning content, and I feel like there's a missed opportunity in my own educational experience right now.

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