Cat Naps and Learning

I include a photo with this post of my favorite study method: the cat nap. This week I studied networking and the networked environment of today's computer users. This post concerns learning materials as they relate to my own personal learning style.

Once, when I studied cancer and issues of epidemiology especially as related to questions of the law and liability, I had an epiphany about education, my own and others more generally.

Cancer is difficult to litigate when one seeks the cause of the cancer in the victim. Cancer's causation is multiple and time sensitive. Exposure to cancer-causing agents occurs in different time increments, at different ages and sensitivities of the victims, and different carcinogenic agents interact and produce unclear causation when lawyers seek to claim compensation for their clients. Cancer, to top it all off, is not so much a disease as a syndrome, a breakdown of normal body function that manifests suddenly after years of erosion within the body's cellular function. What is the cause of cancer? Multiple exposures to a multiplicity of carcinogens over extended periods of time and over various stages of human development.

Although a macabre analogy, this realization concerning cancer dovetailed perfectly with my conception of my own learning style. I do not know how I learn exactly. I expose myself to reading, video, audio, and write and speak in the form of notes and assignments. Some of these methods work better or worse at various times, and some do not seem to take or even seem a complete waste of time. However, I find the recall even of lessons badly learned can be astonishing and amazing. I catch education the way some people catch cancer, through multiple exposure to a variety of materials at different times of mood and day. This week I admit to barely understanding many of the larger issues connected with networking and this is my first exposure to an in-depth discussion of the topic. I plowed slowly through the readings and videos this week and wondered often if anything was sinking in. After a couple of cat naps in the summer heat of Tucson, I find I am ready to continue my exposure and look for signs of positive results although the real revelations are probably some years away.