The Learning Journey

I’m looking at Adrian’s smooth forehead as he bends over his math homework at the kitchen table. Another semester is almost under his belt. He’s working on quadratic equations, unworried. His pencil goes across the page in tiny staccato movements.

I can almost see the numbers tumbling behind my son’s eyes, falling into place. There is something about the numbers on the page that, even looking at them upside down and through the looking glass of time, feels satisfying in the small math-y corner of my brain. I remember that feeling and prompt him: “Aren’t these equations satisfying?” He looks at me like I’m a bit off, and then goes back to his equations.

How do we learn? What makes something stick in our brain? Some learning, like forming a decent ability to apply math skills, requires the average learner to accept a formula and apply it over and over. If you use the formula, you will come to an answer – a correct one! How often in life can we practise an activity with such elegance and ensured success? I feel a small smile when I see Adrian go from question to question on his page, knowing that deep inside that logical part of his brain, he is discovering that formulas in math, and perhaps in life, will work.

Some formulas can work in less exacting worlds – to a degree. Playing with the formulas of language and sentence structure, for instance. Place the elements of language together correctly using the formula and you will create a grammatically correct sentence. Most can master this task. However, how do you become a master of language, characterization, the ability to evoke emotion, and convince a reader they are in another world? There is no formula for conveying meaning as much by what is left unsaid as by what is said – that takes experimentation. That kind of learning is hard to define and it requires time. Like fine art or music or even sport, mastery can take the famous 10,000 hours or more, and truthfully, a lifetime. Stepping away from formulaic solutions can make us afraid and uneasy. We’ll make mistakes.

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As I watch Adrian’s pencil continue across the page, I’m thinking about the messiness of learning in this period of his life. Along with his teenaged friends, he is at the experimentation stage, with more at risk than a poorly constructed sentence or a flopped piece of art. They are testing themselves. What do I like? What do I want to do with my free time? My money? What do I put in my body? How do I convince someone I am right for the job? What do I tell my parents and what do I withhold? Who am I?

These are the kinds of questions that take time to answer, and the answers can change over time. The solutions are often untidy. They can cause arguments. I won’t argue with Adrian over the quadratic formula – it’s proven, and it’s clean and easy once you’ve mastered it. But how to act in this world, what are the consequences of those actions? These are the questions he is wrestling with right now. These learning moments have caused some tears, for all of us. In the car, over the dinner table, or as a door slams in my face and the headphones slam over his ears.

Often he makes decisions that require me to breathe in, breathe out, count to 10 and, most importantly, step away. (Not all decisions are his yet. On some his father and I have been explicit – not acceptable in our house, no negotiation, and while we have his back and will discuss his feelings, the answer is still a hard no.)

When Adrian started high school, he asked which subject would be the most difficult for him. I responded, “None of them.”

“You are learning to learn,” I said. “It’s not the subject matter. It will be about relationships, prioritizing, making decisions.” He looked at me (no, wait, he rolled his eyes at me). “But which subject?” he asked again.

“None,” I said. “You’ll see.”

So here we are, entering the “relationships,” “prioritization” and “making mistakes and learning from them” stage of life. It will be a lifelong journey. I’m still making imperfect choices and messy mistakes, and I sometimes long for black and white, formulaic solutions. As I watch Adrian grow, I repeat to myself over and over that there is no one formula for living, and the minute I try to impose one, all of that essential creativity and intuition will be lost.

Ultimately, it’s what makes life interesting, the lessons in understanding that are messy and memorable, that make you want to exult, or cry and repent, “I’ll never make that mistake again!”

Adrian is in that sweet spot where formulaic learning and experiential, experimental learning are coming together in his growing brain. I can only imagine the potential behind that beautifully smooth forehead, ready to explode in a million synaptic leaps into his own, perfectly imperfect learning journey.