Charlotte Lam, St Stephen's Girls' College

So basically I joined this THiNKSeries Leadership Programme – and there I was, going on a learning journey with leadership being the ultimate goal.
This programme was about leadership, yet do not be mistaken that it was just a general course that taught skills like good time management, communicating with impact, and delegating work. It was a remarkable experience that transformed us, the nineteen participants, not only into leaders able to empower and engage but also capable independent learners. Well, my friends asked me all the time what on earth was I doing every Wednesday after school during these few months of the programme – Wednesdays are not actually ripe, still for some reasons various activities take place – and when I told them I was working on an iBook, especially when I said it was part of “crafting a learning experience for Hong Kong students”, they would go like “Cool!”, “Awesome!”, “Wizard!”… No doubt the book was a big part of the programme, except what really fascinated me was not the project outcome, it was the process I went through.
The programme gave us an opportunity to reflect on, an insight into who we are by starting off with a general introduction to the Enneagram system, a geometric figure that delineates the nine basic personality types of human nature and their complex interrelationships as well as the three Hornevian groups, another related personality grouping system, both of which facilitate self development and self understanding. Only two of all the sessions were spent on discovering our personalities, so obviously we did not fully master how the systems operate entirely. Yet, we all preliminarily identified which personality type and Hornevian group we belong to. Personally, the sessions greatly aroused my interest in learning about personality types and encouraged me to find out about myself, breaking free of my personality instead of letting it control me. I finished a book on the Enneagram system and it not only significantly increased my knowledge of myself but also made me more aware of my own and other’s attitudes and behaviour, developing an understanding of what they reflect on different individuals. On top of that, we also completed a test on learning styles. There are seven learning styles, Visual (spatial), Aural (auditory-musical), Verbal (linguistic), Physical (kinesthetic), Logical (mathematical), Social (interpersonal) and Solitary (intrapersonal). My preferred styles guide the way I learn, the way I internally represent experiences and the way I recall information. All my scores were relatively equal except for “logical”, and my learning styles graph looked roughly like a pizza with one lost slice, probably eaten. Knowing how I learn best is beneficial to my learning, of course. Simultaneously, it is good to know my weaker area as well, so that I can improve and develop it.
At school, eighty percent of the time we have the teacher talking, and only the remaining twenty percent of the lessons are used for discussions, presentations and so forth. Well actually, even the tasks we complete in the little time we have left to think and collaborate at school are assigned by our teachers. We get guiding questions that literally tell us exactly how we should be thinking and what ideas we should come up with. This programme showed me how learning can be like – it was a totally different experience. We got to complete a project on a topic which we were interested in – my group’s topic was “Perfectionism” which may seem unconventional, but we were still allowed to work on it; we were self-motivated in our learning, and we told ourselves what to do in order to complete our work. Our facilitators did not spoon-feed us. They did not tell us how to sail the ship, nor did they sail in our place – they were the compass, showing us the right direction. It was the passion, vision, the genuine zest to learn innate within us that served as our drive to continue sailing through our learning journey all the way till the end, despite the ups and downs involved. There was room to make mistakes, big mistakes, there were obstacles and challenges. We were not told how to fight and completely bullet-proof before we stepped into the arena. We were provided with a spear – that was all.
Talking about mistakes, obstacles and challenges, my group had a whole lot of those. I would say they were neither good nor bad. They were necessary. They told me that I was capable, capable of standing up and carrying on the race after I tripped over a hurdle. My group’s first challenge introduced itself very early on in our learning journey. We somehow had a much harder time deciding on our project topic compared to other groups and they got a bit of a headstart in their project which got me ants in my pants. We came up with two topics to choose from – “Hong Kong Kids” and “Perfectionism”. I, along with some other of my group members strongly wanted to work on “Perfectionism”, and the others objected. We spent much of our time debating or staying silent as we did not know what to do about the conflict. It was a tough forced choice. Our group decided on our topic only when those who were more interested in “Hong Kong Kids” were absent from one session. You could say we did not talk out the matter, but still – problem solved. I was afraid that our group would not function very well after all that hostilities towards opposing ideas, but everything turned out fine in the end. Another horrible mistake made was that two questions of vital importance were missing from the survey published, which aimed to find out whether perfectionism affects connection between people. The two questions were what did the words “perfectionism” and “connection” mean to the respondents. It was essential for the questions to be included, as to validate the respondents’ other answers, their own interpretation of those ambiguous keywords must be known. So after using two whole weeks to collect data, the survey had to be modified and our group had to go through the process all over again. It took double the effort to complete the task and much frustration was involved. All the same, valuable lessons can only be learned the hard way.
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” These were Aristotle’s, a Greek philosopher and polymath’s wise words, words that I think literally sum up what this programme was about – knowing how much I longed to understand who I am, how much I wanted to accomplish, how much I yearned for change, how much I hoped to personalize my learning experience was all that mattered. Everything began with the word “desire” if you get what I mean. A man's mind stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions. Reaching my destination with the programme drawing to a close simply means to embark on another brand-new challenging voyage ahead of me, applying my knowledge gained with this fundamental question in mind: How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I am committed to?