ARRRHHHH! Study Hell! | by Manjit Bansal
Now, don’t you hate it when what you read is just not absorbed in your memory no matter how many times you read, re-read and read it once again? Oh, actually it is more than just hate, it is so many emotions rolled into one; frustration, self-disappointment, stress, anxiety, tears, and anger all slowly linking together like they are forming a wall. The act of reading is tormenting and the words cause excruciating pain. Having dyslexia adds to the drama tenfold as though you were facing Niagara Falls head-on. Well, this is how I feel.
Being an apprentice on a new course, developing a good working relationship with the study guide is key, but instead, you experience uncontrollable anxiety with panic attacks and self-doubt and fear like being crushed by a mountain, not that I know what that feels like but I am sure you get the drift. No matter how often I read the book or watched Youtube videos on the subject, nothing made any sense. I was disheartened as I have always fancied myself as a project manager one day and believed this course could be the path to lead me there. I started thinking to myself, ‘Why did I even push my managers to let me go on this course?’ The whole thing felt like a foreign language, no actually let me give you another analogy as I am good with languages, it just felt like a thesaurus was used for every word in every sentence without a flow and someone was having good laugh at my expense. No matter how many times I read a passage it made no sense and if and when it finally did I was unable to retain that knowledge as it was lost within minutes due to the build-up of frustration. All simply because I just did not understand.
For those who may be feeling the same as I, who have battled their way through a module at a time irrelevant of what course and has left you feeling exhausted with the extra effort you’ve needed to commit just so you can keep up to speed with fellow students that may have not put any effort in at all; I want to share some tips that have helped me so far. You see, I am very persistent and proactive so I had to find a way to get past this and now I feel I may have had a breakthrough, so my gift to you is my tip below.
Go pick up a book, any book, and start reading it out aloud. Read the whole chapter this way, as if you were reading a story to a classroom of reception kids or think back to being a child yourself when you had to read out loud to an adult that listened to pass your reading level. Now pick another book, this time preferably that has less of a flow something that you are interested in but find difficult to read. Read it out loud. Take a ten-minute breather and continue reading your book out loud. The next day pick up your textbook or study guide and read as you normally would. It should feel less of a challenge and let you flow downstream of that river with ease.
Read a paragraph at a time and make a note to condense the whole paragraph into one sentence. It can be a long sentence but make sure it is only one sentence. Link it to an example and visualise it. Take a break or even sleep on it. You will probably remember a lot more than you thought you would.
Repeat the process.
If you are anything like me, and love pictures, colours, texture, and movement to help you learn. Get creative and draw yourself a mind map. Have fun while you learn and dance around or exercise in between chapters. Keep that blood flowing and brain ticking. Reading can be our friend!
So, until next time, keep moving, keep dancing, and remember you are not alone.
Manjit Bansal is a Project Management apprentice and has been writing for The Apprentice Lens.