The importance of Learning how to learn - My "Chamka" moments week of 12/23/2022

Last week marked the 25-year reunion of my undergraduate alma mater in India. The institution, volunteers, and students organized an excellent set of activities, ranging from faculty interaction to hostel/department visits to formal cocktails and meals. Our batch raised the highest ever donation amount towards campus infrastructure improvements. There were many moments of pride in the reunion - 90% of IIT-JEE toppers choosing IIT-Bombay, batchmates holding C-level positions in large companies, entrepreneurial batchmates making a difference, batchmates who've become professors at celebrated universities creating the next generation of talent. There were many moments of nostalgia as we recounted stories spanning creative pranks, hilarious adventures, friendly rivalries. And then there were "Chamka" moments on what we really learnt in our 4 years and what we wished we had learnt more of. I recount a few of my Chamka moments from last week below.

1. "What you will learn here is learning how to learn" - I was reminded that one of our esteemed professors (Professor S. Arunkumar) had quoted this. It captures perfectly the sentiment of most of the batchmates I talked to. Most of us don't remember the specific details of what we were taught. Many don't remember some of the courses we took. But we all valued 2 skills that have served us well and built confidence in our ability to learn.

• Flexibility across learning styles: Some remember taking good notes in classes, some remember learning from books, many remember learning from others on the day before exams. We didn't all have the same strengths and passions and we adjusted our learning styles based on the subject and our peers. For instance, I remember being passionate about Math and enjoying learning from classes and books, but relying on notes from a fellow classmate for humanities subjects. This resulted in my being comfortable with multiple learning styles and recognizing which one I could rely on based on the situation.
• Knowing what to learn: The analytical skills to break and map a larger problem into smaller chunks, each of which serves as a learning subject. The mathematician Georg Cantor had said "In mathematics the art of asking questions is more valuable than solving problems". This is true across more than just math and is even truer today with the ubiquity of information (arguably an overload of information) that can answer most well-framed questions.?

2. "Should have taken more risks, followed more passions" - Amongst the many excellent memories, the organizers of the reunion left us with an indelible artifact - a Yearbook (fondly called the Yaarbook - yaar == friend in Hindi). The book dedicates a page to every batchmate articulating their memories, with one of the topics being "What advice would you give your 18 year old self ?". Reading through the answers, one consisted theme is the desire to have taken more risks and followed more passions. Even batchmates who I perceived as being totally aligned with their strengths, passions, talents, subjects feel like they could have done things differently 25 years ago. I didn't see any answers lamenting grades or not studying harder. Interestingly, none of the answers to "What were your favorite memories?" included grades either. Reading this reminded me of Maslov's needs hierarchy pyramid - while decent grades form a basic necessity to graduate respectably, the real moments that make a difference are the risks we take, the friends we make, the passions we follow. I think there's a deeper "Chamka" moment here that I need to ponder - what is a good way to structure time and expectations towards the pyramid? Will my children answer the questions differently? Will yours? What is your strategy for yourself and your children? Thank you Abhinav (Abhi) Dhall for our conversations on this topic.

3. My infinity is bigger than yours - On a geekier note, I learnt about a set of numbers called transcendental numbers - numbers that are not the root of any whole-number coefficient polynomial. Pi and e are examples of such numbers. While I'd previously thought of these as irrational numbers, the existence of this sub-classification of irrationals was a "Chamka" moment for me. Further, I learnt from here that the set of irrational numbers are divided into a countably infinite set called algebraic numbers, and the uncountably infinite set of transcendental numbers. I learnt about the beauty and simplicity of Cantor's diagonal argument, an elegant counting argument that demonstrates the uncountable infinitude of real numbers. How any of this will be useful to me, I don't know, but it was fun to learn something new. And who knows - Just because I don’t know how to apply some learning today doesn't mean I never will. As Steven Johnson argues in the book Where good ideas come from, sometimes learnings just need time to marinate and combine with other learnings to produce a new "Chamka" moment. Thank you Amit Chakrabarti and Priyank Warkhede for refreshing fond memories of number theory.

I've been asked a lot of times whether undergrad and graduate studies help in the real world. This week's Chamka moments reaffirmed my answer - Yes, even though it may not be exactly how we think they do. Much like going to the gym builds a foundation for physical activities, even though the activities may not look exactly like the exercises performed in the gym. Learn how to learn, take risks, follow passions, and don't tightly couple learning to immediate applicability. Those were my learnings for this week. What do you think?