Experiencing the Learning Process as a Proactive Student

 

Being a student comes with different feelings and a different mindset than being the author/ creator of this blog. As I sat down to start class, I realized that I have to "trust" the teacher. That's opposite to being in critic mode when actingas a blog author. Also, as student, I will have to keep an open mind and keep focused on every word cast by the teacher lest I miss something important, some small utterance that will be a big aha for me even though it's a minor aside for the teacher.

Before class began, I took out my physical paper notebook (grid ruled) and my favorite colored pens. A "trigger environment" was coming together for engaging in a deep learning session because of these simple preparations. By "the" class, I mean here the Real Python lecture on Lists and Tuples (if memory serves). By "mindset", I mean that I had watched a number of videos by the Koi Brothers and Dr. Justin Sung (check here for deeper discuss. See also ADC here). Each of them teaches why and how we should want to create conceptual mind maps. When the Real Python course began to roll, I began drawing a rough sketch of a test mind map ("MM").

My rough sketched MM looked nothing like the image above. The latter came together later, as I began authoring this blog post. Nonetheless, while listening to the lecture, I began to identify some main concepts (thus forming the trunk of the Koi TREE of knowledge). I trusted that grasping of the details (the twigs and leaves of the TREE) will come later. I started to see the course concepts as including (1) an Object Creation phase, (2) which results in an initial Structure/ (Anatomy) definition, (3) this followed by possible Expansion, Shrinkage, and Substitutions of/for list items, (4) perhaps implemented Inherent Methods, and moreover, additional concepts will be recognized later, so I left (5) room for more concepts not yet recognized.

Symbolizing these concepts as corresponding to the creation and growth of a human child (see image above) came to me later because the learning gurus (e.g. Koi) kept talking about their medical school experiences. Also, because I had read The Memory Book, I knew that I had to visualize a symbolic story line that will easily attach to my pre-existing neural substrate. (See, the neuroscience of learning). It began to dawn on me that most Python objects, not just LISTS will have a life cycle. This is so because of the attached project cycles that DevOps follow (see here). They too have a creation and complexification life cycle.

Getting back to the above concept map, (and see also G4G's tutorial (here)), a list can begin life as an empty one ([]) or it can be initially populated by (1) a specified set of literals, or (2) by passing a single sequence argument (e.g. a 'string') inot the list() function. That 2nd one was a surprise to me and I already have in mind how I might use that trick in my code. The Real Python teacher also gave a short talk about list comprehensions, supposedly to be followed by a deeper dive in a different lecture. (I'm still unclear about comprehensions, but not worried because all will come in good time) ...

TO BE CONTINUED ...

Believe it or not, I did not finish listening / watching the whole course yet. Learning is exhausting. Need to take breaks in between. So time to become a student again. Later folks!

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