As an athlete, I would spend countless hours every day practicing in order to perfect my craft. Between hitting 500 balls into the net, taking 200 ground balls, playing catch, and doing other drills I would often wonder: what is the purpose in this? Then I would remember, PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT. While this may be what everybody says, is it true?I used to workout with a pro scout that always told me how much better he got AFTER he quit playing and began to teach the game to others. I always wondered why he said this, and then one day it clicked.

About 7 months ago, I began tutoring at Indiana University. I started to help students in areas like algebra, accounting, and other low level business classes. When I had taken those classes myself, I did well; attended class regularly, did my homework, studied when need be, and ended up getting A’s. However, I never really understood why I arrived at my answers or why things flowed like they did. I was just able to accomplish the end result because of my practicing the problems.

So needless to say, because I did not truly understand the material, I struggled during my first few tutoring sessions. However, as I continued to try to teach my students the material, it started to make more and more sense. Finally, after a few sessions, I not only remembered how to arrive at answers, but I understood why we got to those answers. Everything just made sense and the material became very easy. If it had only been that easy two years ago when I was in the class.

So why did the scout say he got better after he began teaching the game? Because he understood not just the how’s of what he was doing, but he began to understand the why’s. It makes perfect sense to me now. If I had spent more time learning why I needed to make an adjustment to my swing instead of just practicing the adjustment, it would have made more sense to me and I would not have fallen into bad habits consistently. It would have been very beneficial for me to have helped out teammates, trying to teach them the proper mechanics. Then, I would have further understood the why’s. Always remember, if you truly understand something, you can easily teach it to somebody else.

So, in order to truly learn, you should try to teach somebody everything you know. Teach your children, your significant others, your friends, or even your parents. Not only will you understand what you learn, you will be helping them to understand what you learned. Then, they can teach somebody else and increase their knowledge.

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