Limon Capaceta Adolfo Javier

Universidad Autnoma de Sinaloa

Education psychology
30 October, 2017

Who am I as a learner?

I hate studying, but I love learning. This is the most common axiom of any student
whatsoever, and the same one I disseminate when dealing with unwilling people; my
friend, we all love to learn, but it is a tedious labour just hearing the studying; everything
you plan to do, somehow, will require making an effort for obtaining it. Sometimes I
obliterate this when I am studying and my imposing and venerable antagonist
procrastination appears. I am a human being; hence, I have strengths and weaknesses. In
the academic context, these traits follow the same patterns and I tend to clearly display
them in my academic life.

I tremendously love learning. I am enthusiastic and always have intrigued me the

neuroplasticity term and what it entails. My most learning-productive age was between 12-
18 years old. I enjoyed to learn about everything, I used to read at least one books per
months, and I tried hard in enlarge my brain capacity; I was obsessed, and that tore me
apart from my family and friends; rarely I went out of my house, and when I felt obfuscated
or overwhelmed, an excellent strolling time was my cure. It was a very productive and
decisive time in my life, and almost all my abilities have roots in those years.

I discovered I am a good autodidact, and most of the things that, at the time, appealed me, I
learnt them by myself. My family could not ever afford several courses I wanted to take
like computers, music (playing the piano, violin), languages. I felt tremendously frustrated
during my puberty because I wanted to be good in everything, but the lack of money
always meddled in my desires. I was turning to 15 when I had my first laptop. I remember
me using that laptop. Previously, I had experienced the marvellous thing you can do with
computers and internet, but I had not seen the real power of the Internet until I began to
scrutinise what was in front of me. Revelation maybe is an appropriated word for that
experience. I have no Internet connection at that time, but I remember that I connect to an
open wireless network, I was really excited and an enormous world was in front of my
eyes, waiting for being discovered by my curiosity.

I got into this marvellous world instantaneously. Programming, graphic design, German,
Japanese (I used to despise English because of bad experiences), technical knowledge about
computers, music theory, mathematics, physics, documentaries, YouTube, finances
Wow, I just wanted to learn everything about everything.

Gradually, I realised it had become more a weakness than a strength. At the end, I ended up
knowing a little about everything, but not everything about something. I remember in my
time as a high school student, I became the typical asocial person who has replies for
everything and knows about everything; however, I felt frustrated since other people were
admirable in certain subjects like English, Spanish or mathematics, programming,
meanwhile, I was lost in middle of everything trying to the best in something.

I had this terrible experienced when I graduated from high school. It was the final
presentation of a project which was a library system that my team and myself had
developed during four months. I was the leader and the teacher had really high expectancy
towards my work. After all, I was Adolfo, the guy who is a genius programmer, the guy
who spends more than fifteen hours on his computer looking for information. I decided to
do something ambitious. It was so ambitious that my teammates believed that it was
impossible to develop this project and works. I believed in myself and my high
expectancies and I decided to continue the project. During the four months, I increased the
features of the program, and it became easily unsustainable and chaotic It got out of our
hands. In the presentation, everything was excellent. Some systems were austere, others
were really functional, and our team, well, we were still programming one hour before the
presentation, of course, it did not go well whatsoever. I got depressed and abandoned the
idea of being the best programmer in the world. I used to compare myself with legends in
this field and think about how me, a person who could not manage a simple library system,
would be the best programmer in the world. Finally, I abandoned the whole idea of study
informatics.

My best strength when it comes to learning is that I am an autonomous learner, and I have
the initiative to learn something new whenever I can. Notwithstanding, this resulted in
many problems in some areas of learning, and one evident factor is my chimera-English.
When I started to experience the learning process of language in the BA, I started to regret
about my method of study in languages. It may sound as an excuse for my broken English,
but I did not have the opportunity to learn the language methodically, and I started to mix
rules or omit them, even compare them with my mother tongue. I focused too much in
despising English and listening. I used to feel frightened simply because I imagine
myself talking with a native speaker, but at the distance, you could see me confident and,
yes, my curricula said English 70%.

Solving my problem of learning everything can be solved easily: discriminate information.

I tend to ask myself, does this help me in my goals, life plan, or similar? Yes. How? No?
Do not waste your time. It very difficult to do this for me because I feel the necessity to
learn something, but I think in all those areas where I fail constantly and I got frustrated.

I am proud of myself. I encouraged myself to go against the lack of money, and I won.
There must be better inspirational stories about how people accomplish their goals having
no money whatsoever; nonetheless, we all are in different contexts, and we are shaped by
our culture and family beliefs. I was born in a, mainly, conformists family who thought I
was crazy for learning something strange or exotic, but I remember when I was reading
Fausto by Johann Goethe, there was an aphorism that, when I was feeling lost, it helped to
think I am right, paraphrasing: there is not a better enjoyment than a man discovering or
learning thing by themselves, and each time I learn something, this idea comes to my
mind. I am great because I enjoy learning things by myself.