About learning how to learn

So the mid-term exams are over and I've been here for two months already. To state the obvious: time goes fast. Here's some news from Korea, the best kept secret in Asia. In this text I'm going to tell you about some useful things I learned so far, even if it means that you'll have to spend hours on actually reading the whole text with all the external links.

;-)

Content: 1. Learn, 4. Random

1. Learn a) Academic
- Priorities, status quo, management, school & money

Priorities

First, I'm no longer making an effort to learn Korean (other than tutoring once a week) as I'm going to leave the country in a few months. I made the right choice not taking the language course, which has 6 hours of lectures a week and a lot of homework; I have enough to do as it is.

Besides, learning a language in four months is possible but it won't stick to you unless you keep on using it. If I was here for a year it'd be different, but still... the language course is a lot more work than the courses I have. Being able to speak the few sentences that I know gathers enough compliments to make me value the effort to learn as much as I did, though.

This should give me more time to write the blog... or should it? Honestly, I never spent too much time on homework anyway. Priorities, you see.

Status quo

What would your answer be if you were asked whether you're a creative person?

In my opinion being creative is just asking the right questions and challenging the status quo. Different people do this different ways; being creative doesn't require you to be an artist. Well, you'd be better off expressing your creativity but that's just one of the ways.

Now the biggest obstacle I see a lot of people having is functional fixedness. This means that you tend to think that a book is something you read but you can't see it being used for something before it's obvious: for example, a book could be used for starting a fire when you're freezing outdoors. You probably didn't think a blog I was going to write about my exchange studies would be like this, did you?

Going further with this, you're also inclined to having something called a mental set: we tend to use old, familiar patterns in problem solving. Challenging the mental set is also known as thinking out of the box. A thought: in organizations, reinforcement could be used for those who think out of the box with the help of disabling their functional fixedness. Rewarding behavior as opposed to results.

Now you might ask yourself: why is he writing about this stuff? Because I think there's something here; I'm here to learn more about psych, management and change. If you did the MBTI personality test in a previous entry you know more about why I think the way I do.

With the help of a professor, whom I respect maybe more than any of her colleagues I've been taught by before this, I'm now doing research on change management and psychology even if it's rather pseudo-scientific ("non-scientific", not very accurate). It's more fun this way, i.e. that I don't have to formulate any formal hypothesis or the like. Besides, that's how all the Big Guys (like Freud and Jung) started out. The reason I'm doing this is because it's my passion; I feel driven by it.

Management

In a management simulation course I'm the CEO of our group so I get to put a lot of the things I learned of management so far into practice. Not a lot of this stuff comes from my university but most of it from my time in AIESEC. Wouldn't think that practical skills matter, huh?

Anyway, here's something I'm wondering about when a leader/manager: when put into an unfamiliar situation such as in a simulation, should you first check the theory or do the practical stuff? Especially when it comes to communicating this to the group there's going to be a conflict. I'm not exactly confident this but I believe you'll mostly need good communication skills (with experience of ambiguous situations being a bonus) and try deal with it.

School observations

The seating order here is fixed so I'm happy I don't sit in the front row in any of my classes. The professors don't really appreciate if you sleep in the class, even if it varies professor by professor. As a foreigner you're constantly noticed anyway so the further back the better.

I've discovered there are a lot of things many people here don't know that I already do. Reading that sentence after I wrote it made me realized that I really do sound like I'm full of myself, so I'll just keep it here as a reminder. Anyway, general psychology should be a mandatory class in high school: I never learned about learning, cognition and memory before here.

In AIESEC I'm kind of consulting the local committee again, as I'm helping them with implementing a personal development talk and a plan soon. They suffer from a lack of motivation which I believe is a result of a lot of work and not really seeing the reason why they're doing it.

Talking about AIESEC: When coming back from the first Local AIESEC Seminar I went to (in 2007) I realized that languages actually affect your culture. I was more able to communicate openly in English than I ever could be in Finnish. This is true not only in this context but it applies to other cultures as well. In Korean you use different words when you speak to elders or younger people etc, which would feel plain stupid in Finnish. The Eskimos then again have dozens of different words for snow (unlike the Finns). Each to their own.

It's all about the money

Yes, here I'm going to write about politics. I'm going to do it briefly this time.

First, the food you eat might not be the right food to eat and you eat shit (in Finnish). Why did I put this piece of pretty damn important information here in the middle of the text which is the most unlikely place to be read? Well, like I said, I try to prioritize and I'm using the politics section for random stuff that's probably useful for you but that you at first won't feel like reading. Anyway, here's what Harvard University thinks you should eat. Further, people don't even eat the shit they buy (in Finnish).

Making money with a zero budget is possible if you're analytical enough and you act on what you analyze, given you've found a changing environment. Take a look at the #2 Google search result for free internet dating.

Now to the real politics. Some of the member countries in the European Union are such idiots. At least there's guerrilla marketing (in Finnish)(of some kind) going on in Finland.

In China, the Nobel Peace Prize winning country, the Big Guys are not happy. Even if the Nobel Prize will probably not lead to any real changes.

Then about the money again. Ho ho ho, attitudes are so easy to change (in Finnish) when you just do enough marketing. Don't tell me pirates are filthy caricatures of Real Men unless you have a fresh point of view, and if you do, let me know.

Ta-Da! The Finnish church just lost a lot of money (in Finnish). Who cares about the 30 000 people who left it because the politicians affiliated with the church rather follow the letter of their good book than the spirit of it. In other words, we live in a world where everyone is equal, but some people are just a bit more equal than others.

Here's a http://www.girleffect.org/share/the-big-picture/the-girl-effect-ticking-clock. You didn't see this stuff 10 years ago.

Oh, and thank you politics for the division between the two Koreas, which is the reason for the 2-year army service here.

To wrap it up: that wasn't brief at all, now was it?

1. b) people

Following below: some thoughts I had in September.

I never call anyone and dislike to wait for people. I guess some people don't appreciate this but I don't know how to relate on talking on the phone or even writing messages to them unless I know the other person really well. Rather, I try to go when I want where I want, see who's doing what and then socialize.

The exchange student groups are getting closer and people are gaining trust. When put into an unfamiliar environment you unavoidably look for some safe havens as does everyone else. Sociologically it's interesting to find which people are e.g. connectors as Malcolm Gladwell would put it in Tipping Point.

Shortly put, connectors are people who bring people together. I know I'm not one but when given a social tool like facebook in an environment where people want to enjoy their time, there are a lot of times when you end up seeing a lot of people at that specific fiesta you wanted to go to. The more people the more difficult it's going to be of course, as long as it's not well organized - which it never is here.

As for me, as usual, it's not very simple to find people to relate to but I don't think of that as too much of a problem; I rather hang out with the people I can have a good time with, whatever that means. Not everybody wants to talk about what's happening in the field of research in psychology and I'm cool with that. Still, I at times want to have a deeper conversation as opposed to chit-chatting or the like. But that's just not that simple when you have a culture and all.

When people show indifference & negativity to others, my instinctive reaction is that it's because of me. But is it, and is this feeling shared by everyone? Being open-minded is different from believing that you're open-minded - e.g. just because you do something differently than is expected from you.

There are a lot of people who should learn some empathy. Now empathy doesn't mean that you're a happy-dappy nice person all the time and everytime, i.e. sympathetic, it means that you understand what others feel. This takes some effort I guess but it'll be appreciated.

For example: you can speak your native language but should you do it when there are other people around who don't understand it? It's like sharing a bag of candy in a classroom but only to the people you decide to share it with. It's the easy way out: if you face a problem in communicating in a common language, you'll need to overcome it and not to switch to your own language. You'll never learn. In contrast, if you just decide to speak a language everyone understand, then you will and that's it and you'll learn by doing.

Like me, everyone is driven by something. Organizations are similar, just as uncontrollable as we are, but driven by profit with values as a guideline on how to reach it. It's all about the money, still.

Change is different when it's done by a good friend of yours or someone you don't know, e.g. me. The attitude and the level of resistance varies based on the environment and the individuals in the change process. If I were to tell you that the moon is cheese your reaction would be different than if someone you know well and idolize would tell you that.

Being a bearer of the bad news is thus not the purpose, as what you do defines who you are: the patterns of your behavior define your personality and give you a brand. Ultimately, being a bearer of the bad news might not result in the desired end-state. You should try to be open but not stupid.

1. c) Culture

There's a phenomenon going on here with English teachers. What? Koreans idolize the western culture and as it's considerably difficult for them to learn English they are willing to pay a little extra to someone who can teach it to them. See more at Craigslist, ESL Cafe or Work N play.

Another thing that stands out to a Finnish guy is that women's position more or less sucks, even if depending on where you are, how you are and what you do. Well, unless you're independent but that'll take some money. This is based on discussions that I had here, some stating "sucks a lot" and some saying "sucks but not really that much".

Anyway, the working culture here is unbelievable. People work a lot. After work they also don't go home but mingle with soju bottles and work friends. Which makes me think: does the women's position suck because the guys' position sucks? Is the freedom here just as much propaganda as in North Korea? Probably not but you get the point: nothing's ever as good as it looks. Well, the life of Nick Vujcic, maybe. You won't regret watching that.

Professors cannot be criticized by students and everything is taken quite too literally in my opinion. Thus it's very difficult to adopt new practices, and in the long run enabling open discussion is the best way to learn and develop as all opinions are taken into consideration, at least to some extent. Like in Orwell's 1984, some opinions might be more equal than others.

But one thing is for sure: it's pretty inefficient here. Take a look at this NY Times article, according to which South Koreans work 1/3 as effectively as the French. Now even if it wasn't near to that bad it still says something, i.e. that the culture doesn't encourage being effective.

A concrete example is my dormitory, where you have a room inspection at 11PM every other Monday evening. There is no way to communicate anything to the administration of this private company on the campus so I've actually gone to the international office to talk about the problems. You know, the attitude is not to accept requests from lower in the hierarchy.

As a result of the culture, the inefficiency and the size of the country it's observable how much unused resources there are lying around here. This means that there are a lot of ways to make and get easy money, should you feel like doing that.

As you figured out by now I don't feel comfortable with a lot of the norms, or more accurately with a lot of the mores you have in cultures. This is why I easily connect with other AIESECers because the organization's culture is not very formal and the culture is the same globally.

People here need to show off, or the norm is that you have the right stuff: status symbols. E.g. the equipment when people go hiking is way too professional. They are robotic in a way: they simply comply to the norms. They identify as a part of a group rather than individuals, as opposed to the western culture where you are you and I am me. But they do want to help you out if they can. Usually, though, they can't.

4. Random

I haven't been satisfied with this blog, not because I haven't updated it recently but because of the level of writing. Not updating this is more of a reason for it than a consequence. Moreover, I don't think I've had enough analysis and the blog hasn't been deep enough; I feel like I've mostly scratched the surface. That's not why I'm writing this. I don't feel I'm good enough at expressing myself: do you know the feeling when you try to break a stick by bending it but you just can't get good enough a hold? That's how I've felt. Thus I've been exploring ways to improve my writing.

Even though you might have read the introduction below the title of this blog, have you thought of the purpose of this blog? I needed to rethink this a while back, and here are my conclusions. Firstly, it's my gateway of expressing myself. I need a way to let someone know how and what I think about.

Second, I try to make it interesting to read, but to whom do I write this to? Compare for example with this one and try to figure out who's the target audience. Now I'm not completely sure how this blog works for you, and how and IF to make more people read me but the one thing I can do is make this more readable.

Third, I want to develop the ideas that I have and process. I don't know how long it usually takes for people to realize it but I only recently figured out the importance of expressing myself so that I can review the end-product. There are two ways for me to do this: keywords and maps. I'm a visual learner and I need to see what's going on to be able to do something.

I hope I didn't just do this.