I did something last night that I haven’t done is more than 30 years. I had a guitar lesson. I took a few years of guitar as a kid but gave up on the lessons at some point due to lack of interest on my part. I later picked up the guitar again and taught myself to play, mostly by using magazines with music from bands I wanted to learn.

There’s a lesson there about the nature of motivation in learning, but that’s not what this post is about.

I had an interesting experience with my new guitar teacher yesterday. He was showing me a system and way to learn how to use scales to quickly improvise over different chords. I was able to follow it for the most part, but not as quickly as he was explaining. After a short time, my mind was a blur as I struggled to mentally keep up with what he was showing and explaining. I know that my goal is to take the next week and practice this idea at a much slower pace, but it reminded me of what it feels like to be a learner. In particular, it reminded me what it was like to have a grasp of some information but know that there was large swathes that were passing you by.

Kind of what its like for many of our students on a day to day basis.

It’s good to be reminded what it’s like to be a learner.
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