I remember some of my first 'lightbulb' moments. I'm thankful to a few teachers for them. Mr. Seip - high school chemistry. Some days I walked in without any motivation to learn and halfway through class he would say something that triggered a flood of thoughts and ideas and all of a sudden I realized what it was that he was teaching me.
Then there was a rather embarrassing day in Mr. Baldus' Algebra I class. We were working on matrices and I was plugging away at the exercises, trying to get that stupid puzzle to work in my head. I sat in the second row (I always sit in the second row - close enough to the front so that I am paying attention, but not so that I'm sucking up) and all of a sudden, everything clicked. I looked up and I'm certain that the shock of the lightbulb effect was all over my face. He asked me if everything was ok, I assured him I was fine and began scribbling as quickly as possible through the exercises just to ensure that I really had broken through the problem and on to the solution. I watched him chuckle as he went back to the work on his desk. Afterwards he caught me as I left and said, "You got it - didn't you?" Yes, I did!!! And the moment was exciting.
I love those lightbulb moments.
When I woke up this morning, I had some extra time, so I picked up another of the multitude of Greek textbooks I have laying around. I was moving through the initial information pretty quickly - for heaven's sake, I've been working on this for awhile now, I shouldn't have to re-learn everything when I pick up a new book, should I?
There have been a couple of stumbling blocks for me as I work through the grammar, things that I should probably just naturally understand, but haven't been sinking in. I've been pounding pretty hard on grammatical information for the last couple of days and all of a sudden this morning and then again this afternoon, I have had moment after moment of insight and understanding. I am (again) flooded with information as my mind begins to comprehend the structure of the language. THIS is where I needed to get so that I would feel comfortable moving forward.
Now, the thing is, in my aged state, I no longer simply allow a look of shock to come over my face when I suddenly grasp a concept. Oh no, my stupid body sends tears straight to my eyes and it's all I can do to continue reading. This last time, I shut the book, went looking for a lightbulb image and wrote a blog. Sheesh, I'm such an old lady!
When is the last time you were thrilled by something you learned and felt that lightbulb explode?
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