Author: Anvi Khandelwal, Class IX A
Normally, people think that to become “smart”, they need to go through 12 years of school, 4 years of college and many extracurriculars. 16+ years and people still end up unemployed or with a job with minimum salary. Everyone wants to become smart, they want to learn more skills, solve problems, get better grades and learn hard stuff.
The problem is, most advice on the internet is very vague and philosophical. At some point, you realise that you can’t scroll for hours trying to ‘learn something’, you need to start to actually learn things.
So what do you have to do to become smart and actually learn? You don’t have to follow some 6 step guide on a facebook page or watch some videos on Youtube, all you have to do is read. You can read fiction, non- fiction or any genre you like! Never forget how to teach people what you know without making them sound obtuse, this way people will actually learn from you.
Now, how do you find these books? It’s actually very easy, just read about a topic you want to learn about and what you think is interesting. You can google any book on whichever topic you like and buy it or read it as an e- book for free.
But, there is one thing you should know before learning a skill. Unless you practise a skill, your brain will think it’s useless. For example, when we study, we usually think that repeating a topic, studying in intervals or mind mapping will help us get better grades but in reality, doing practice questions will give the most results because they stimulate the actual situation in which we will need to use what we learned. In short, learning information and making it seem useful to your brain is all you need to do to get smart!
