The Mind is but a Dream, Turned Seed, With Many Weeds, Comes Tree

Today I finished the excellent, free Coursera course Learning How to Learn.  The course utilizes neuroscience research in order to teach its students how to best practically go about learning.  It examines bad learning habits ("zombies"), procrastination, creativity and focused vs. diffused modes of thought, neuroplasticity,  test taking, and a bevy of other topics.  It gives a number of very specific techniques that have been proven to be effective, including the pomodoro (using that right now!), interleaving, the memory palace, positive mindset, and adequate sleep

I've already found this course to be helpful and am now eager to implement some of its more laborious concepts!  The reality is that substantial potential is left on the table if we are not cultivating the brain.  Doing so must be at all ages and stages of life, for all kinds of people with varying intellect, creativity, etc

Finishing up this course, I would like to draw on one of its concepts, that of the power of metaphor in learning,  to illustrate hope and success

The mind dreaming

Every feat of greatness begins with a dream, as hackneyed as that may sound.  It begins as irrational, something relegated to fantasy and illusion.  The idea that there could be integration in the viciously racist South, mere years after spates of lynchings and persistent violence and given how racist the country still is today, was just a dream.  To take from the Coursera course, that Professor Barbara Oakley (the course teacher) would somehow make a switch from being a linguist and translator in her 30s to an engineer and educator was only something she could have dreamed; many believed they are tethered to one career for life, and the possibility of switching fields entirely is essentially out of the realm of expectations

Dreams alone, however, do not fulfill themselves.  While there are certainly events and cataclysms that have simmered for so long that it seems they are indefatigable, there are still agents that have put them in motion with their own great motions.  Even when we feel that our dream has already been dreamt, someone still has to fulfill and execute those dreams or dare to dream something fuller and even more lucid

Let's imagine dreaming a wonderfully lush and abundant garden

It has everything we need for sustenance and well-being.  How did it get there?

In my own experience with garden, it is by no stroke of luck or magical thinking.  The soil must be tilled and filled.  The season must be right.  There must be good spacing of plants and this needs to be consistent.  Constant water must be supplied but not too much.  Then, the seeds need to be planted with care

We can see the tilling as comparable to the Coursera class I just finished.  Here, we begin to start  applying some of the techniques that make our neural foundations solid, and hence, everything else.  We make the brain soil rich

The season is no different than environment.  The course noted that when crucial element of growing creatively is surrounding yourself with creative people.  It's putting yourself in environments where you can have the freedom to think.  These crops, like myself, won't grow in the Cleveland cold, or at least not as efficiently

The spacing?  We have to make sure that there is proper sleep, leisure time, and that balance of work and life.  We want to, as the course recommends, space out or memorization and learning over weeks rather than cramming it all the day before a test or presentation.  We must interleave; that is, trying different sets of problems and learning styles as we go through the material. Let your field be expansive!

Our watering is the rate at which we add in content.  Ready to move from Stephen King to Dostoevsky? Newtonian physics to string theory?  You must be conscious of how much water you will add in and how often, or fear letting that water become fire and having yourself burn out

Then we get to the seeds (this would clearly come after watering, but it is more important and ordered as such).  What are we actually looking to plant?  Seeds that we've never eaten before?  How much and how big?

The drought, insects, and crop death is akin to failure.  We will fail constantly, but we must keep planting while learning to ascertain which of the other elements are not properly calibrated.  Keep planting because the world is always in need of freshness

Then the apple tree sprouts.  Are we content with just this one tree?  Are just apples sufficient?  Is the process worth going through again?

Ultimately, that is largely answered by how well you went through the processes and not how satisfied you are with the products (trees).  This was another learning element advocated by the course, simply allowing oneself to try the methods for solution without stressing too much on what the answer to a math problem may be, for example.  There is a wonderful connection to earth that comes with touching soil; it is an ownership of ideas and a real investment in creation.  If not done right, there could possibly be a tree, but will that tree continue to grow, and will there be more trees?

A delicious product, but will you desire to continue to produce with the same energy given by the apples?