Name: Lovely Grace A.

Garvez
Year & Section: 4 – 401
Course & Specialization: BSED – ENGLISH

Reflective Journal # 11 B:
My Personal Philosophy of Learning

Philosophy as we all know is the love of wisdom. It is a set of beliefs and ideas one has
deeply engraved into one's thought on how a specific thing works.

Oftentimes teachers and students I've seen so far force themselves. To learn, memorize,
teach in a forceful manner. Which results to some good results but often ends up in a headache and
most of the time, a lesson that will not be engraved in their minds for a lifetime. My own personal
philosophy is inspired by the philosophy of Taoism. Which is the philosophy of not forcing.
“Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion,
you ruin what was almost ripe.” - Lao Tzu. To force is to mean destruction. To force is to mean
fighting the natural course of events which can be applied to learning. Forcing oneself to learn such
a specific lesson ends up in frustration and desperation. Which I go against. In learning one must be
happy in doing so. One must be ready to open the book and be happy and ready to learn something
new. Not where it becomes a chore. Not where you dread your teacher from going into your class.
It’s a way of not forcing for things to happen. Surely you will get some results by forcing yourself to
learn, to practice not in the right time. Most of the time it will end fatally and you'll get drained and
tired of doing so. Learning is not a sprint. It is a marathon. It takes time to carefully master one
thing. Not just in a single night. So forcing it to happen. Forcing yourself to learn. To absorb
knowledge in a short amount of time is tiring and overall pointless. Instead one must prepare a
specific time, mood and setting. In doing such things such as learning. Instead of cramming in one
night. One must prepare ahead. What I must learn today, tomorrow and the day after. Let things
cruise on its own. Eventually you'll get there. You’ll get to what you want to be with effortless action
or as Alan Watts call the way of the Wu wei or the way of not forcing. This cannot be only applied in
life. In the things we want but also in learning or in our education. But it doesn't mean that you
don't do something and just be lazy and stupid. That is not the way of the wu wei. It is about doing
small things that eventually will add up and become big. Learning something like maybe an
equation in math is not easy but instead of learning it one day. It is much easier and less frustrating
to take it slowly at a time. Especially if one is given a long amount of time to do the specific thing.

Though it is crucial not to force things but there are certain aspects that we can't simply put
this/my philosophy into place. It maybe work for me. Since it is my belief and that is deeply within
my mind but some people just doesn't have the same mind as me as the saying goes “No two man
are the same”. So it may work for me but not for you. Secondly, since it is within us all too usually
force things to happen. It is much harder for us a much more passive approach in learning Ever
since we were born. We were forced to think that hard work will get you somewhere. Though in
some cases it is true but most of the time it isn’t.