The Most Underrated Skill in Any Classroom: Learning How to Learn
- Jun 10
- 2 min read
Nobody sits you down in school and teaches you how to study. They teach you what to study. There's a difference — and for students navigating competitive programs far from home, that gap can cost everything.
Kyeisha Laurence knows the gap intimately. She's simultaneously pursuing an MD at Harvard University and a public policy degree at Harvard Kennedy School. In Episode 3 of BABA: Becoming a Better Ancestor, she talks about the skill that made both paths possible: learning how to learn.
What metacognition actually means for Caribbean students
Metacognition — thinking about how you think — sounds like an academic buzzword. What Kyeisha makes clear is that it's a practical survival tool, especially for students entering environments where the volume of information is designed to overwhelm.
Caribbean students often arrive at international universities already carrying more than their peers: the pressure of being far from home, the financial weight of what their education cost to make possible, and sometimes the added burden of being the first. Knowing how to learn — how to organize information, how to pace yourself, how to recover when you fall behind — isn't optional. It's the difference between finishing and not finishing.
Systems over hustle
One of the most important things Kyeisha pushes back on is the idea that success in difficult academic environments is about working harder. It's about working smarter — building systems for retention, understanding how your brain consolidates information, and knowing when rest is part of the process, not a break from it.
For Caribbean students who've often been taught that effort equals outcome, this reframe is liberating. You don't have to outwork everyone in the room. You have to out-learn them — and that's a skill you can actually develop.
A Harvard perspective, grounded in community
Kyeisha isn't speaking from a distance. Her work in both medicine and policy is rooted in what she wants to bring back to her community. The learning strategies she shares aren't just for surviving elite institutions — they're for building the capacity to actually use what those institutions give you, in service of something bigger than yourself.
That's the BABA thread: every skill you develop, you develop for the ancestors who made you possible, and the descendants who are counting on you.
Watch Episode 3 on YouTube:
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