Learn How To Be Taught

Many students enter college assuming that the professors will be experts on the subject matter, and have infinite knowledge of the topic.  You tell yourself that your potential for knowledge is limited only by your own inability to form the question, because the answer is always there, a given, at the head of the class, waiting to be prompted.

The reality, though, is often quite different. Teachers are not necessarily experts. 

On the one hand, some university professors were chosen for their expertise on a given subject.  Who better to teach laboratory technology than lab technologist? Well, this person may be equipped with the knowledge, but they are not necessarily trained in the art of educating.  On the other, someone who himself spent years at university acquiring an education degree should be more than qualified to teach, right?  But unless this individual followed up his education degree with a two year college diploma in laboratory studies, you are no farther ahead. 

The bottom line is that learning is the responsibility of the student, as it always has been.  Regardless which side of the argument you fall on, the fact remains the same: a student will get from a class what he puts into it.  If your teacher is an expert on the subject, but not an effective educator, it is left to you, the student, to actively pursue ways to retrieve the information in a way that will maximize your knowledge.  And if you are working with a qualified educator with little knowledge of the subject matter, it is equally up to you to take what this person can teach you about education, and go find the facts using tricks from a teacher.  In other words, learn how to learn.  At the end of the day, the success or failure of your education rests solely in your hands.