Frustration = Learning

In our very first meeting of the term Professor Benham Rennick told us that 'being frustrated means you are learning something' and I can't believe how very right she was. Honestly, at first I was sitting there thinking, yeah right, I learn tons of stuff in class without ever getting frustrated over it. But what she said just kept coming back to me, specially in times when I was frustrated. I started to see that she really was absolutely right.

In class, I don't get frustrated because I am not really learning, most of my time is spent concentrating on what my prof is saying and writing down notes about everything he/she says so I will be able to do well on a test later on. It is a lot like what Freire talks about in the Banking Concept, I am just soaking up everything the prof is telling me but because I am not in dialogue and questioning the material I am not truly learning it. In fact out of the three classes that I attended today I could probably only tell you the broad outline of the material that was covered. And when it comes time to write a test, generally material is memorized more so than actually learned so that I can repeat exactly what was taught and receive a good grade.

I realize that I have become more aware of when I feel frustrated, and I make an effort to stop and think, 'what am I learning from this?' instead of just stopping because I am frustrated. An excellent example is this blog. At first I was frustrated, I had a vision of what I wanted it to look like, but my lack of computer skills and experience made it difficult for me to do what I wanted to because I didn't know how. Also, I didn't enjoy typing my entries so I wrote a nice little "coming soon" message and procrastinated as long as possible until writing my first entry. While posting my first entry and again while trying to scan in my hand-written entry I encountered all sorts of difficulties with the computer putting up its little box messages where the only option is to press 'ok' even though its not okay at all! Needless to say I encountered more than a few frustrations, but looking back and even now I can see that I've also learned many things. Scanning an entry and posting is no longer difficult and takes 5 minutes instead of about half an hour. I learned enough about blogging to learn how to make links and such on my page. And, believe it or not I have come to thinkof blogging in general as 'not so bad' and even get ideas in the middle of the day of what I'm going to write about next.

More related to my trip though ... I envision this summer as being a series of frustrations and learning experiences, and in the end I hope to have been frustrated enough times to be able to feel that I really did my best to let go of control and to truly lived and learned the Ecuadorian culture.