Often, I hear people say this: "But I am a slow learner". They see it as a disadvantage and often believe that they are not capable of learning well or doing as well as people that learn as fast, which is not true. There are great benefits to being a slow learner, and if you are one, then you should be happy about it. This article will expose you to the benefits of why being a slow learner is of great advantage.
Actual learning requires understanding, and understanding is derived from the time spent in learning. The more time you spend learning, the more you get to understand the basic rudiments, which you can later build upon. In the process, you gain deeper understanding, retention, and other benefits.
Quality Over Speed
As much as speed is important, it is not of much benefit if basic and foundational concepts are not well grasped. At the end, one will have to come back to them, costing more time in the process. I can remember a movie that I watched titled "Cars". It is a car racing movie in which a top-rising car was asked to push a machine that is used to tile roads. Asper his roots are from speed; he pushed the machine with the thoughts of speed alone without having to think of the quality of the work he is doing. At the end of the day, he did a bad job and was asked to do it again.
You may think this story does not align, but yeah, it does. The lesson here is that if you rushly run over a concept without fully understanding the rudiments,. When you get to the finish line, you will feel as if you didn't learn anything or have forgotten most of the things you had learnt on the way. Why is that? That is because you did not spend enough time to gain a deep understanding of the concept before moving on. You were focused on speed and covering everything in time but instead you wasted time doing nothing.
Critical Thinking and Reflection
One major advantage that slow learners have is the ability to reflect, ask questions, or challenge assumptions, which can lead to a richer learning experience. As a slow learner, when you try to reflect more on the concept you begin to gain deeper understanding, greater creativity, and even better problem-solving skills as you think through the material deeply.
These are what fast learners don't give time to. Most fast learners are expert in memorisation, but they don't have a deeper understanding of the concept. Instead, they base their understanding on the surface level. This is why being a slow-learner comes at a great advantage.
Resilience and Persistence
As a slow learner, the more you are able to fully grasp each concept and move to the next concept, you build a resilient and persistent nature. A nature that makes you stay through a concept till you have full understanding, which is applicable to scenarios in the real world.
In the real world, when you face difficult situations, because you have built up the patience, resilience, and persistence to stay through difficult concepts to understand. You will be able to work in difficult situations to reflect and solve complex situations.
And Many More...
Asides from these, we can say that slow learners gain long term retention and mastery, and this is because of the time spent on reflection and having a deeper understanding of the basic concepts.
We can also talk about creativity and originality. When you take time on a particular concept and reflect more on them. You will begin to discover other unique perspectives or possible approaches that others can miss.
Shocking Truth
Most of the greatest minds recorded were called Slow Learners. And that is because of the quality it takes and the skill set built as a slow learner. Examples are:
Leonardo da Vinci who is one of the greatest minds ever recorded, struggled in academics while he was younger. He was termed a slow learner by his teacher and at the end, he became a master of various fields in art, anatomy and engineering.
Albert Einstein was slow to speak fluently until he was four years old. His teachers thought he was mentally slow and even suggested that he would not amount to anything. Despite all these, Einstein was the one who developed most of the concepts used in physics today.
Thomas Edison who was home taught by his mom after he was labelled in school that he could not keep up with lessons and often asked questions. At the end of the day, Edison became one of history's greatest inventors.
There are many more on the list if you check. I believe that you can now see that being a slow learner is a good thing that can make you perform better than peers who believe they learn faster than you do.
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