Learning Through Stories: How Did You Learn To Drive?
Today begins the fourth round of the Learning Through Stories project on the Brilliant Blog. (See here and here for stories from the first, second, and third rounds.) A lot of scientific research—and our own experience—demonstrates that we understand and remember material best when it’s presented to us as a narrative, or when we tell our own story about it. So, once a week, I invite you to share your stories of where and when and how you learned something in particular. And I’ll be asking you to do one additional, perhaps challenging thing that is nevertheless the key to the exercise: to draw out a generalizable lesson from your story that could apply to the learning of other things, and could be used by people other than yourself.
The question this week is: “Where, when, and how did you learn to drive a car?” Write your answer below, and try to include as many details about when, where, and how it happened, as well as what lesson you can draw from it. I’ll start:
I learned how to drive a car when I was 16, but I didn’t learn how to drive a stick shift until I was in my mid-twenties and my then-boyfriend (now husband) bought a used white Volkswagen Fox—with a manual transmission. After finalizing the sale, we headed to a nearby parking lot for my first lesson.
Now, in an earlier round of Learning Through Stories devoted to learning how to ride a bike, I and many other contributors noted that learning from someone you love (usually fathers in the case of bike riding) can inspire a trust and confidence that makes mastery possible. But—and I bet many of you have experienced this, too—learning from someone you love can also make things more difficult at times. I probably should have taken lessons from a driving school, because every time I messed up—and I did continually—I got irritated at my boyfriend for trying to help me, no matter how gently he did it.
In any case, I did finally get the hang of it, and was so proud of myself. I got a little over-confident, in fact, and was promptly punished for it: the car started stalling out again. I was confused: Hadn’t I just been doing this right? What changed?
What changed is that I had started to get careless, pay less attention to what I was doing. I had to go back and be an absolute beginner again, staying conscious of every step. There’s no shortcut to learning: we move slowly from halting deliberateness to smooth automaticity, and only repeated practice gets us there—as much as we’d like to jump ahead and assume we’ve got it down cold.
OK, now your turn: How and when and where did you learn to drive?
My parents were too keen on the idea of setting me loose on the roads when I was 16, but little did they know my grandfather had been teaching me to drive since I was 6 years old.
For me, it all started with the tractor. Now, I’m not a farm boy, but my grandfather had a pretty big lot that was nestled up to a golf course. For him, it was imperative that his lawn be kept the the same standards as the fairway – this meant constant mowing.
What 6 year old doesn’t want to hop behind the wheel, any wheel? I know I did! My grandfather started by having me sit on his lap while he would navigate the lawn, constantly pointing out the importance of keeping the lines straight. Soon there after, he would allow me to mow the wide open areas. This was done in “turtle mode” and under close supervision, but eventually I was allowed to navigate around trees and bushes. When I was probably 7 or 8 I graduated to rabbit mode! (The excitement was hard to contain)
By the time I was 10 or 11, we started the same process of driving a car. Fortunately for me, at one time in his life, my grandfather was a driving instructor. He was extremely patient even when I got a little heavy on the pedal, but that rarely happened.
I learned driving in two phases. First when I was 19. You could then start only after your 18th birthday in the Netherlands and you have to get lessons of a licensed drivingschool. After a few tries at the practical exam I quit. Why learn to drive with not a car to drive in.
Later when I was finishing University I got back to it and finally got my license when I was 29. It didn’t come easy. It is difficult to get it in the Netherlands. I didn’t get mine in the normal way. After you fail a few times you can ask for a re-exam with the ministry of transport. I got it that way. The man was already waiting half a day for the first candidate to show up. He so glad that I was there and he said I would make no accidents and that was what he had to look at. I was still making lots of mistakes by being very nervous.
The roads are very busy and for years governments try to lower the number of road accidents. I have a lot of friends who never got their license or later because there wife or husband owned a car. My husband does not have one. No need to get one.
I drive mostly on holidays abroad and go to the office by bycicle. You really learn to drive after you get your license by doing.
The best advice I got was: drive in every car you can get your hands on.
I’d love to see a “Learning Through Stories” unit on “”How I learned how to learn.”
Maybe we’ll do that next, Fran! I agree with you—would be interesting.
I learned to drive for the first time when I was 17 from my Dad. He was a great teacher and quite patient with me. I was quite confident until I met with a minor accident which really shook my confidence. After that I wasn’t so keen on taking the driving test at 18. I would drive occassionally when I felt confident. I noticed that I eventually got over the minor incident, but I could drive only when I was experiencing self confidence.
It wasn’t until a few years later that I started driving myself around. I would make excuses to avoid driving since various aspects of my life were undermining my confidence to be successfully independent without screwing up.
It helped my situation after I came to terms with how my low self esteem was inadvertently creating obstacles in my life..
I learned to drive when I was 25, which is last year. I’m not saying that now I can drive perfectly. I think it was an unsuccessful experience. And here’s the story.
In Indonesia, you could drive legally only after your 17th birthday. Of course you have to have a driving license. And yes, I started lately on my age 25 when I realize the importance of driving skill. I took a course at a drivingschool which had four sessions and was held once a week. Unfortunately, I had four different coaches and three different cars in that four sessions. Thus, every session I began with new adjustment, similar steps, and got different version of driving technique. Of course plus different coaching styles. That’s very funny for me. It’s true.
Having no skill, I didn’t retake the course but I did some practices with my dad. However I’ll retake another driving course. I still have a goal till today : mastering driving skill
Unlike many guys, I seem to lack the gene that makes cars and driving inherently fascinating. Driving has always seemed to be just a means to an end. So I was content to learn to drive an automatic, which was easy enough.
But then my dad insisted that I learned to drive with a stick. Even worse, the idea was that I would learn by driving an ancient pickup truck on hilly dirt paths on our property. It was incredibly difficult, and I hated the process. I stalled the truck dozens of times and sometimes would just seethe with anger.
The one thing that kept me going was the notion that this might turn out to be a useful skill one day. Learning to drive this pickup truck was not rewarding in and of itself, but maybe it would pay off in the future.
Several years later, it looked like that would happen. My girlfriend at the time had a car, and I needed to learn how to drive it to be a good boyfriend. At last, I thought, all of that hard-earned experience would pay off!
It didn’t happen. This car’s stick shift was completely different, and it had been several years since I’d driven the pickup. I was basically starting from scratch. I stalled the car repeatedly, cursing away, while my girlfriend tried to suppress her laughter, which only increased my frustration. Only several weeks of patience and persistence led to real mastery.
This says something about how easy is it for learning to evaporate over time or get derailed because two different situations are not as similar as they appear to be at first. There’s a “use it or lose it” element to many skills, and real learning has happened when you can “change gears” and adjust to a somewhat different situation.