Applying+Past+Knowledge+to+New+Situations

=Applying Past Knowledge To New Situations=

"I've never made a mistake. I've only learned from experience." Thomas A. Edison

This habit in particular just reminds me of “learning continuously.” I had a discussion with a friend a while ago about how to measure intelligence. I was frustrated by how carelessly people label certain individuals as “smart” when those individuals may simply just be on an advanced “track” at a previous school. But, one thing my friend said to me will forever remain stuck in my memory. This friend told me that the mark of an “intelligent” person is not only the ability to memorize and regurgitate the facts, but also to apply them to future situations.

I find this to be incredibly true. The previous summer, I was a bit bored after all the SAT preparation (maybe not necessarily test preparation, but mental preparation), and I studied a bit of chemistry with a Chinese tutor (I learned the hard way that self-studying requires too much self-discipline for a restless teenager). While I’d forgotten most of the stuff because I learned everything in Chinese, that extra knowledge did come in handy for the oxidation-reduction unit. Some of the others initially might have struggled to understand oxidation numbers, but (not to brag or anything) I immediately realized what my tutor meant by those numbers. I knew how to do the numbers (along with understanding the rules, such as oxygen always has a redox number of -2 except one situation, etc etc), and I finally understood the fundamental concept of it (thinking about the process of working it –that’s metacognition!).

Being able to draw one event and connect it to another will become a very important habit in life. Because the learning journey is a lifeline JOURNEY, and we aren’t learning this to merely ace high school, it’s important to be able to keep past knowledge. Only then can you apply it to new situations and not consider your “past knowledge” a waste at all. I’m happy that this isn’t one habit I’ll have to work on a lot.



Figure 1: As a result, my test score for the oxidation-reduction unit was fairly high.