In November 2022, Barbara Oakley — the instructor of the Learning How to Learn course I once took on Coursera — came to Hanoi.
This piece belongs to a series of 100 posts written in memory of Thom's grandmother, published on his Facebook.
In November 2022, Barbara Oakley — the instructor of the Learning How to Learn course I once took on Coursera — came to Hanoi. Her story: someone who had a very rough time with maths could still become a university professor of engineering. Her present field has a great deal to do with biomedical engineering combined with neuroscience.
Or the story of her own elder daughter. Even though the girl too struggled terribly with maths as a child, with perseverance she went on to finish Stanford’s residency programme.
What I remember best is a story from her online course, which she brought up again on the day of the event: "If you learn slowly and are not all that clever, you can still win a Nobel Prize" — what she said about her own hero of science, "Santiago Ramón y Cajal".
He was a terrible student with a poor memory, was thrown out of several schools, and in the end became the Nobel-winning father of modern neuroscience.
You can look up her course on Coursera:
https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn
“Not having” is a gift. And how to borrow things from “not having”.
New ideas, old materials, and the award-winning school by an architect from Burkina Faso
Or: treat people kindly and give them a chance, and you will be surprised by what they can do for you.