Learning
Boogie
Heaven Host
in All Saints
@Gramps49's comment on another thread -
Made me think -
What do you wish you had studied?
Why don't you start now?
And, to Lamb Chops point for seminarians to have a degree in something besides religion. Amen. Wished I had. I probably would have gone into something like geology. It is one of my advocations.
Made me think -
What do you wish you had studied?
Why don't you start now?
Comments
Maybe I should have a go at stand-up comedy?
But I'm an exceedingly slow learner, which tends to put me off doing another degree.
I've looked into it, but Open University fees are pretty steep.
There are many things I'm interested in. I think maybe Horticulture would be my subject of choice at the moment.
More worryingly - I am 55 years old and my short-term memory is absolutely fecked. I really struggle to learn new things at work, where there is generally not very much pressure at all. I am impressed that there are people here who might consider starting anything requiring the kind of feats of memory that we might have been capable of in our 20s and 30s.
I wanted to be an English teacher but in the 1980s people from my background didn’t go to university. I wasn’t even allowed to go to college for A levels as my parents wanted me to get a job and contribute to the family rent. So I worked in a care home on a youth training scheme instead. I assume if I had gone to a traditional uni then it would have been to study English Literature.
I studied my first degree part time while working full time as a nurse. It was a combined degree of Sociology, English Literature and Health Studies (as there was no OU health degree in those days) and I have done a second degree in History since then. It is history that I have really fallen in love with. I am lucky enough to be in a position where I can study for free; I am about to finish a masters in early modern history and I am considering a masters in classical studies next year. I use study as therapy for my bipolar disorder, it gives me a safe focus for my overactive mind.
In my case I also use my health expertise for my history research. My current dissertation is about developments in eighteenth century psychiatry.
I have pondered the possibility of working on something like a Masters in Liturgical Studies, but so far I haven’t found a program that would fit my various needs (location, cost, etc.)
And yes, I'm planning to do this because of my own problems and right now, because of my husband's--because every freaking year, gardening season starts up, and he overdoes things, and for a couple of weeks he's convinced that he has a life-threatening disorder of some sort. Because pain, which is a thing he is mostly unacquainted with. Grrrrrrr.
After retirement I trained and obtained my certificate at Citizens Advice. It suited me well, not only fulfilling a need to help others, but I am a good listener, can quickly focus on what is needed and look up, apply and communicate the relevant information, then write it up succinctly. The key is that you don’t actually need to remember the detailed information - just as well as I don’t retain the detail.
I did this for almost 15 years. I have done enough learning, though I enjoy mastering new pieces of music to sing.
Between theology assignments I’m trying to read The Hobbit in Welsh, which is also a considerable challenge.
(*Occupational Therapy in this case - though on my new course OT usually stands for Old Testament!)
More recently, I wish I had the time and the energy to learn Welsh.
Oh what era of lit?
I was a little bookworm as a child and so ended up in libraries. Now my happy place is in the garden and cutting flowers. It makes me wonder whether I would have enjoyed horticulture or floristry. Mum was an excellent amateur florist, my skills are nowhere near her own, but I do enjoy buying and arranging flowers.
19th century broadly, but with some pre-war modernism thrown in for good measure.
Yay!
Finnau hefyd! Mae'r Hobyd yn eitha anodd, dw i'n meddwl!
(Me too - Yr Hobyd* is quite hard, I think)
*The Hobbit.
Would I actually go to the effort of studying for another degree? Probably not. In order to do that, I would first have to get fed up with my current occupation, then have the financial ability to retire and spend time on studying. Never say never, but it seems unlikely.
It's the sort of thing that fascinates me, it's proper primary research, and I have more time to devote to that sort of thing now, so I'm quite excited.
That does sound interesting @Eigon - I hope you make some interesting discoveries.
When I was a child I remember reading a story about a child in England digging up Roman gold. Mum saw me digging in the garden and asked what I was doing, "Looking for Roman gold," I said.
I was really disappointed to be told the Romans didn't come to NZ and decided that must mean Maori were cleverer than Romans because they found NZ. I also decided NZ was a very boring country. Mum said, "No it's not, we just don't know about it yet."
Fast forward about 55 years - my brother D was visiting from the US, and we went to an exhibition at the museum. It blew both our minds. In a small town further south that I had visited once to go ice skating, there had once been a tropical lake, while in a small country town half an hour's drive north of Christchurch they had dug up evidence of 150 cm tall penguin.
I mentally apologised to Mum, who had died before the discoveries were made, so she didn't get to say, "I told you so."
Your exhibition at the museum sounds amazing @Huia as does your research @Eigon.
As for learning.I went to Library School to do the Library Association's Professional exams. I sometimes think I should have done a first degree and then the library qualification. However I doubt I would have chosen philosophy and religious studies which is the degree I have from the OU taken when I was in my fifties. I was on the cusp of deciding to explore doing a masters in creative writing a couple of years ago when I was elected onto our Town Council. I decided I wouldn't have the time for both. I might go back to the idea next year when my term on the council comes to an end.
If any other Welsh learners are inspired to have a go, it is an excellent translation (by Adam Pearce, 2023). He manages to translate all the songs and riddles into rhyming metre while retaining the sense, and the text reads beautifully.
I was quite impressed that Tolkein managed to translate from Elven to English and make it rhyme and scan...
I would not like to do another degree as it would require a lot of time that I don't have at the moment. Even when I retire in a few years time I would not want to have something like that dominate my life.
I would like to learn to play a musical instrument (I have a flute in a cupboard somewhere and the bagpipes have always interested me) and I might study creative writing so that my humble scribblings are improved. I could do these things now if I made myself allocate time for it and when 9-5 becomes a thing of the past I may or may not be successful in this.
I would love to have a theology one too but time and money...
I kinda regret not taking history further.
Thank you for my new rabbit hole @ChastMastr 😂
IME History syllabuses at school are so focused on particular events that they do not result in students having a lot of broad historical knowledge. It's more a set of skills and understanding of how historians work that are gained. TBH I have similar observations of English Lit. An anecdote if I may - long ago when T rexes stalked the earth and I was doing a Primary Ed degree (don't ask) we did a drama session. We were asked to pace about the space anxiously, then imagine we had something on our hands we couldn't get off and was making us more and more agitated.
When we were asked what famous character this could be, many of the science and maths specialists responded "Lady Macbeth". The English specialists mostly didn't know. "Ah" they said "we didn't do Macbeth".
Sometimes the focus pushes out the general knowledge.
Wow. We didn't "do" the Scottish play either: we "did" Henry V. I've seen the Scottish play on stage, of course, could quote from the Blackadder episode that is based on it, and references to the witches, to Lady M, and to Banquo's ghost are scattered everywhere.
I think I'd have probably been able to interpret that set of actions as Lady Macbeth, but I'd have been tempted to answer "James Herriot".
(I regret dropping French. I was going to take an AS in French, but was told I couldn't take that and 4 A-levels. That was probably the right thing to tell me, but I still regret it. )
For reasons we’ve never understood, our daughter’s class studied and staged an abridged production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 3rd grade (basically 8–9 years old).
I suppose if you skip over all the problematic elements, it's a cute magical fairy story...
If I'd been clever enough I'd like to have studied law, but I wasn't. Or psychology, having discussed his studies with our son and proof-read his doctoral thesis.
Those last two words fascinate me. Why "of course"?
I saw it once. School took us to see it. While the individual words appeared to be in English I couldn't understand it. Watched it again on the telly trying to help LBLet#3 with Eng Lit GCSE and still couldn't. I only know the story because of retellings in Modern English.
As ever, there is an XKCD relevant to this:
https://xkcd.com/2501/
My degree is in Theoretical Physics with Mathematics. I also recently completed an HNC in Computing (took me 2.5 years, part time, due mostly to my indiscipline rather than any difficulty with the material). I was no great shakes as a pure mathematician, and I wonder if I might have been a better match for a computer science or engineering discipline in terms of finding a career that suited. Training as a teacher was, in retrospect, unwise but I don't necessarily wish it hadn't happened because other than having a rather dull job I'm quite content with where I am and teaching is what got me here.
I might try and get my HND or bachelor's in computing once I have more free time, but I'm not rushing into it just now.
Having been the frustrated and unwilling navigator in the family car because of this inability I bless the inventor of the SatNav!
And yes, I think his inner monologue is absent, too. At least that is the excuse I give him for the many occasions he interrupts the ones going on in my head!
I think this is a tangent, for which I apologise.
Wouldn't have been for me. Without already knowing the plot I don't have a hope of following a Shakespeare play.
It's not really a tangent - it's closely related to how we learn. And the title of the thread is 'Learning'. 🙂
I have always had a shocking memory so I'm not clever at all in the conventional sense. Yet I can see and make connections at lightning speed. I'm also a 'reader of emotions' in people (and dogs).
I suppose my kind of intelligence will become more useful as people outsource memory to AI. I have to keep quiet during crime dramas as I work them out far too soon!