Learning from others, learning from problems

Another memorable experience I had from the seminar is, when we play a game name tantrix. it consists of hexagonal chips that has three colored lines on one side and number on the other side.

Tantrix

How to play this game? You can check it out here.

It started by our facilitator, his name is John, divided us into groups and asked us to work it together within our group. First he asked us to make a loop with 3 chips, then gradually increased into 4 chips until we played all the chips, which is 10.

As you may guess, the complexity to make a loop is increased upon adding more chips, in simple it will be more difficult to make a loop  because you need to consider the different curves of the line.

On one particular time, one team was able to solve this very fast. The instructor told my team that why didn’t we look and learn from other team?

Then I said, the experience is important to me, so I want to enjoy finding the solution part. He was burst to laugh and jokingly he asked the class, “what would you do, if you have team member who is unwilling to learn from others success?”

Before I give my answer and continue my story. I’d liketo ask you the same question and keep the answer to yourself.

To continue my story, one participant answered, “Well, let her be, she’s still in the stage of want to experience everything or do something by herself.”

And the whole class were burst to laugh. Maybe it’s a just trivial to some people but that statement sinked into my mind and woke me up in a way.

Lesson learned:

  1. We know that outcome can be everything but we need to remember that process is also important, because we will learn something.
  2. Although process is somewhat important, there are times when we should think out of the box, that learning during achieving our goal can be done in not conventional way.

On side note, learning with the conventional way means, like in school, from chapter one two and so on then practice session, and we will have exam at the end of the semester. But the unconventional way is working by case; we learn while we try to find a solution to a problem.