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School breaks: your turn to drive your education Part 2

2021.02.15


Many students travel overseas. Traveling overseas is what I recommend for all my students to do. There is only so much you can learn by staying in one place and reading books. As a university student, you’re finally old enough to be able to get on an airplane and travel to another country by yourself. This is the time to see what the real world is like. There are so many different languages and foods and cultures and perspectives and museums and animals and the list goes on. It is time to take all that you have learned from the textbooks and go out and see it firsthand. Indeed, the reason that I live in Japan today and teach English is because of the time in college when I went overseas and was so moved by that experience. I feel it is my duty to give my language to others and empower them to explore their world. 

 

When the brain stays in one place for a long time, everything becomes easy and automatic and the brain can work on auto-pilot. By placing yourself in a new situation, the brain has to return to its original state that it was as a newborn baby—when you didn’t know how to do anything. In a different country, you often don’t know how to speak, don’t know how to eat, where to go, how to get there, even how to properly function in the society. So your brain goes into overdrive and uses all that you have learned to figure out how to live. This wakes up the brain and it feels happy. It is finally being stimulated and used again. This is how the brain is supposed to function. With the brain in this state, there is more circulation flowing through the different quadrants of the brain and new, expansive thoughts more easily come to mind. This is an opportunity to think deeply about those pivotal questions such as, “Who am I? Where am I going in life? What do I really want to do in this lifetime?” Those types of questions rarely surface in our everyday routine lives, and when they do surface, they are difficult to answer because the brain is sleeping. But now is the time to ask those questions and to come up with the answers. 

 

During this time of COVID-19, it is more challenging to travel or do some of the things that I mentioned. But it is not impossible. Understand the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity you have with these extended sessions of free time. Commit yourself to designing your method of enrichment. It is no longer the school’s responsibility to decide how to navigate your education. Only you know yourself best. Look inside and figure out how you can put yourself in a new and challenging environment so that you can wake up your brain and grow. Your life may move in a completely different direction because of the decisions that you make during these precious university years.

 

 

Photo Credit: author

 

 

Blog Quiz

 

Q1. Why does the author live in Japan today? 

Q2. How is the brain supposed to function? 

Q3. What is the challenge that the author gives to the reader at the end of the article? 

 

Scroll down  for the answers to the quiz.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quiz Answers

Q1. Because when he was in college, he traveled overseas and was moved by that experience.

Q2. In a new environment where it has to work hard to figure out many things.

Q3. To find a way to put oneself in a new and challenging environment during the school break in order to wake up the brain and think about life's important questions.

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