ladypoetess:

Now, see, this pisses me off.

Not everyone learns the same way.

When I was in nursing school, I didn’t take notes in class. You know what I did? I played endless games of pocket tetris. The chair of the nursing program approached me about it once, going so far as to say that she thought for a time that I must have copies of her tests, since I aced everything she tested us on, even though I never appeared to be paying attention.

Visual learners, auditory learners, hands-on learners - everyone’s heard of those types, sure. But that’s not all there is. There’s a 4th learning style that is actually best suited to splitting the focus between disparate activities to learn most effectively. For me, that was playing repetative games or doodling, coloring print outs of Sailor Moon characters or fiddling with small ‘fidget’ toys. An English Lit professor had identified this as my learning style a couple years earlier and lo and behold, I started learning better when I started catering to my actual learning style.

I was lucky; the chair of the nursing program knew about the learning style I exhibited and didn’t bother me again about the fact I sat in the back and played mindless games in her classes. The goal of class is to learn, right? What the fuck does it matter if the person learning does so via note taking or doodling or looking at puppies? To this day I most effectively form associations and recall memories of things I’ve listened to by doing something very different with my hands and eyes.

Don’t assume people are slacking off just because they’re not learning the way you expect them to be.