Good learning vs Bad learning!

Everyone of us have spent considerable amount of time in our life learning something. Either through a teacher, or our colleagues or via Internet.

I think it would be really interesting if I talk specifically about a very good learning experience, and a considerably bad one.

First about the bad experience —

I went to a Conference to learn about Startup Growth strategies. Listened to many Speakers there, but it turned out to be a disappointing experience. The speakers actually talked about big, generic stuff using loaded words, but somehow I wasn’t able to derive any practical output concerning my day-to-day challenges. Speakers talked about having passion, right co-founders, never-to-give-up type of generic motivational gyaan, whereas I needed to know — how to hire good candidates, how to design pitches for angel investors, how to build right culture for early employees etc. By end of Conference, I returned disappointed without learning much!

Now about a really great experience —

In my college days, I vividly remember one particular course done in summer semester. I was doing a major in Aerospace engineering, and we had a course in Aerodynamics. The professor’s name was Kunal Ghosh. Unlike many other Professors who used to take a very boring approach filled with mathematical equations, Prof Kunal used lots of stories to generate our interest in the subject. He kept his pace slow, use lots of drawings and made us visualise about interesting Aerodynamics phenomenon. Mathematical equations did eventually turned up, but at a stage where interest of us was already peaked at subject in hand, and equations just served as a useful tool in overall scheme of things. Naturally, we didn’t missed any classes, and ended up learning lots of interesting concepts.

So key take-way from above experiences can be that teaching methodology can make a huge difference between a bad and a good experience.