Snippets from my Book “Be an A-Student or Pass Better Trying”

Snippet 1

Why a book about being an “A” Student?

• Everyone can learn. THERE IS NO TRUE DUNCE IN THIS WORLD. If my grandma, uncle and friend could do it from scratch, YOU CAN!
• Learning like any other thing, requires commitment and passion. You cannot learn when you do not seriously develop a zeal to learn. You cannot develop zeal to learn when you don’t see that it is important to you or you think of it as just what you have to do because your parents say so.
• No matter your situation or struggles with studies now, YOU can turn your learning fortune around if you commit to it. That you were not doing well before does not sentence you to a lifelong failure. You can learn to learn better! & get better results. YES! YOU CAN!!

Now read on to see why.

Before I begin to share the principles, tools, skills and techniques in the book, let’s get some background and context.

Three things happened in my life at different times that triggered my continuous obsession with knowledge and improving mine and other people’s abilities to learn to be their awesome best. These motivated writing this book.

1. My grandma, Kakalami (her soul RIP in Jannat) was an unusually curious woman with a voracious appetite to learn. But as it was in those days in my place, she was not sent to school, had no formal – western – education. But she was incurably curious to learn. Oh she was!

I would come from school, then in primary 4. She would pick my book, holding it upside down. I would tease her she was a “black head” and correct the positioning of the book. She would open the book and point to my notes for the day asking me to explain it to her. Imagine a child explaining complex things like long multiplication or division to an unlettered adult, and you can feel my difficulty. & woe betides me if I failed to explain to her satisfaction. I may get the hand (a smack)! Right from early in my life, I had to figure out a way to explain things to someone else in a simple way. She motivated the “Teach Grandma” study technique discussed in the book https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0855ZGTGB

She it was who made me learn to be a teacher that could explain even complex concepts in calculus simply and intuitively (any of my students reading this? shout “Aye” in the comment if you agree this is true). To God I am grateful for the gift of her.

2. My uncle and mentor, Alhaj M. Tauhid (may his gentle soul rest in peace & Jannat too). He too had no formal schooling. I was his personal secretary and teacher. Back in the days, whenever there was a letter for him to write or read, he will send for me to write it or read and interpret for him. It went beyond that. He wanted to learn to read English and do some Maths especially commercial arithmetic quickly as he was a contractor and had forms to fill and proposals to write. He bought all primary school textbooks and we got working. Again, right early in my life I was a teacher having to teach people with no formal education from scratch.

These two, my grandma & Alh. Muhammad (my uncle) were avid learners who asked a lot of questions and demanded good answers. They were truly a teacher’s delight. They wanted to learn and diligently worked at it.

I had to learn early to figure out how to put to them complex ideas especially from Mathematics in very, very simple, easy-to-understand ways in my native tongue.

& I am thankful for the gift of the two of them. For they made me learn to learn so I could teach. Because in teaching, the nemo dat quod non-habeat rule applies too. That is, you cannot give what you do not have. So a teacher has to know to make others know. They made me a student and teacher for life.

3. A friend I met later down the line in the course of my education. It was in my secondary school days. He was older than the rest of us but wanted to get a certificate because as he said: younger people with better education were brought to be his bosses in his office.

He came back to learn several years after he left school. He was on paid study leave. He was finding it difficult to cope with school work. I happened on him when he was just beginning to think of abandoning school, and going back to his work. He felt perhaps he was too old to learn or lacked “brain”? I gave him hope that he could do it and that age had nothing to do with learning. We began to read together; me being a mini-teacher to him. He got going and he kept at it. He won.

Why these stories?

From the experience with these people and subsequent experiences teaching hundreds of students at various schools and levels of education, officially or privately or in my corporate training and consulting gigs, I learnt the following:

• Everyone can learn. THERE IS NO TRUE DUNCE IN THIS WORLD. If my grandma, uncle and friend could do it from scratch, YOU CAN! BELIEVE THAT.
• Learning like any other thing, learning requires commitment and passion. You cannot learn when you do not seriously develop a zeal to learn. You cannot develop zeal to learn when you don’t see that it is important to you or you think of it as just what you have to do because your parents say so.
• No matter your situation or struggles with studies now, YOU can turn your learning fortune around if you commit to it. That you were not doing well before does not sentence you to a lifelong failure. You can learn to learn better! & get better results. YES! YOU CAN!!

These, brothers and sisters are the lessons that motivated me to write the book. In the next snippet we shall see scientific and other evidence from the book why YOU ARE AN “A” STUDENT TOO! Yes. YOU ARE! Though many shortchange themselves, believing they are not.

YOU ARE! An A-Student.
I KNOW YOU ARE!!
I AM SURE YOU ARE!!!
I’VE COACHED COUNTLESS OTHERS TO WAKE UP TO WHO THEY ARE!! – A-GETTERS.