LEARNING WHILE TEACHING

Few years ago, when I decided to become more professional in IT as the direction of my career path, I went to take courses, online and in class, to learn the technologies, like network, servers, DNS, DHCP, etc.. Because my major back in college was English and I had very little knowledge of the IT field, especially that of corporate level, it was very hard for me to take the first steps and understand the concepts, theories and troubleshooting procedures. Back then, courses and official documentations were very important resources for me to move on. Another resource of the same and even more importance was the online forums and blogs because courses and official documentations can only give you very basic and standard concepts and theories, and how things should work, but in reality, whether in testing environment or production environment, we will see some issues not included in the classes or the documentations, and we will always experience situations where things are not working as they should be. That’s when such forums and blogs play more important roles. The authors share the same problems they have had and how they sort them out and very often than not, they also provide very detailed information on why that problem happens and also attach some quite useful links for reference if people are interested and want to get a better understanding of that concepts or technology. Actually, even nowadays, I still go to such forums and blogs for resolutions or workarounds when I see some issues that can not be resolved with standard ways.

Back then I was very grateful for those sharing and to those authors and I was determined to do the same thing when I became professional enough. But how professional can be called professional enough? I have no idea, so I have never tried to share anything. I always think I am not ready and there is nothing meaningful I can share. I always try to learn something, technologies, history, psychology, sociology, etc. and I always try to keep the learning to myself. Then it comes the moment when I start wondering the meaning of the learning of those things. I mean, most of these things I learn by myself, they can not be used explicitly in daily life or in my work and I can not prove how much I have learnt and how well I have understood them. Sometimes I feel I have learnt them very well because I know the general concepts and I can make a speech about them on my own, but sometimes it seems when I need any of them, they are just running away from my brain and I can not find any value out of them.

Then one day when I talk something with a friend, it happens to be what I have learnt or read, and I start talking about it out of what I understand about that thing. My friend does not have much knowledge about it, so most of the time, he just listens and occasionally asks some questions some of which I have never though about or have never tried to understand it from that perspective and it is new to me. During the talk, I do most of the talking or maybe teaching we can call, but I also learn something new out of what I have already knew and at last I find myself having a better and deeper understanding on this topic. Good! I teach and I also learn something new.

I guess that’s what can be called sharing as well though I haven’t planed to do so before I did it. I have always been trying to learn as much as I can so that I can be ready to do some sharing someday but never realized the moment is already here. Only now can I say every one has something to share because you always have something others don’t know and can help others if you share it out. Previously I didn’t believe this. I thinks that’s also what life is. We want something and we put our head down and pay all our attention to the hard work for the thing we want. We work on and on, always thinking there is some distance between that thing and ourselves. And then someday, when we look up out of some other reasons, we notice that thing is already behind us or is within our reach, and then we have another goal which seems very far from us again. Then, similar things happen…