I love to learn. I’m not sure exactly when I realized that. I always did well in school. It came easy to me but I don’t remember loving it, at least not until college when as an adult you choose what you want to learn.
I’ve always been somewhat of a “super high achiever”, but I am working toward recovery. I no longer seek to achieve simply to achieve. Now I desperately seek to achieve the things that mean something to me on a very deep personal level.
So when I say I love to learn, I mean I LOVE TO LEARN. I feel like I spend most of my free time reading, researching, envisioning the future I want to see come to BE.
Learning changes me. It makes me feel ALIVE. These days it feels like oxygen.
If you’ve read my other posts then you know that I would love to pursue a Ph.D. I hope one day to do so. If I never do that it won’t be because I chose to stop learning and researching. It will be because I believe I don’t NEED to be part of a program to do either. I do it everyday. I choose what to read, what to research…and in case you haven’t gotten the point…a lot of it is on education and how I believe it is insufficient to meet today’s societal needs.
I’ve written about my daughter’s own struggles that drew me into this research. I’ve written about how mainstream education is outdated and not built to produce United States citizens who are creative and can think for themselves. I’ve written about the fictitious epidemic of ADHD in our country that is a result, in part, to over-stimulation outside the classroom and under-stimulation inside the classroom. I’ve written about social entrepreneurs like Angela Jackson who are starting programs to widen the horizons for children who wouldn’t get that without her program.
And now, I want to address all the people out there who are reading this blog. Did you know that you can take Massive Open Online Courses called MOOCs (such as Coursera) which are taught by professors from universities such as Stanford, Harvard & MIT among others? FOR FREE…anytime, All you need is a computer and an internet connection and that is available at the library if you don’t have either.
Not sure you are up for college material? Try setting up a free account on Khan Academy and you can learn Math from Addition & Subtraction through Calculus. They also have lessons in Science, History, Economics, Computer Programming…the list goes on and on.
Think you would rather LEARN TOGETHER? I am considering organizing a Krypton Community College course in Norwich. Krypton is an educational experiment that launches on 10/1/13. These courses are led by volunteer organizers (like me) who invite friends (like you) to join them for 4 weeks to learn together. The first course is based on the work of Seth Godin and is called Go: How to Overcome Fear, Pick Yourself, & Start a Project that Matters. The curriculum will definitely appeal to creatives and business owners (that’s me & me) but I know for a fact that there are dreams buried deep inside all of us and sometimes it is simply FEAR holding us back. Or we didn’t get picked for that job we wanted and we don’t realize we can pick ourselves to do work that matters.
Overcome Fears
Pick Yourself
These are soft skills of success and they are available to anyone willing to do the work to teach themselves these skills. I just did both. I picked myself as an organizer despite not being sure that anyone else will be interested or whether it will be too hard or won’t work (aka fears). I did it because I think it is worth doing. And I did it because I have repeatedly forced myself to do these things and while they get easier over time…I still have plenty of work to do!!!
Excerpt from Seth Godin (one of Krypton’s founders and the developer of the first course) regarding the class.
“The class doesn’t exist to test you on your knowledge. Instead, it’s a safe space to share your experience, to expose your fear and most of all, to push yourself to explore how to do work that matters.”
“My experience tells me that in the world of ‘pick yourself’, the doors are only open to those that actually show a willingness to expose themselves to the risk of walking through them.”
YOU’VE BEEN INVITED. You can view course materials at this LINK.
30 Dream Days 