Personal Growth: Self-Educating & Goal Setting During Covid 19

 

Maybe you’re someone who has lost their job during the Covid-19 pandemic, or you’re just looking to pack out your resume with interesting and useful things. Maybe you just fancy expanding your knowledge, or maybe you want to spend your time feeling that it’s not being wasted. Regardless the motivation, personal learning as an adult is a fantastic way to spend your time, especially when you have an abundance of it.

Now is the time. We’re living in a world where we, as women, can become educated through methods that our ancestors weren’t privy to, and can also educate ourselves. As someone who didn’t necessarily want to go to university but ultimately ended up attending out of fear that I wouldn’t have the same opportunities without it, I would have loved the ability to study without spending three years or more on a campus away from home. While I ended up loving university and having a fantastic experience, my eighteen-year-old self would have appreciated the option. We now have the Open University and countless other institutions that have made it possible to study towards an actual degree without ever leaving the house. In addition, with countless websites offering shorter courses for free, or at least for very little money, the time to grow our minds and learn a new thing (or twenty) is now.

It’s only been just over a century since women were permitted for the first time to attend university. It’s been less than a century since all women were given the right to vote. Since then, we’ve been able to become doctors, dentists, historians and lecturers. A lot of these things we’ve been able to do thanks to institutions like universities, but a lot of other qualifications don’t even require spending upwards of nine years in steady education. Now, the world is our oyster. Sites like Coursera and Udemy are perfect for personal learning, as they are cheap, easily accessible and allow you to learn at your own pace.

 

And, as I’ve said previously, now is the time. The UK’s current national lockdown prohibits us from socialising and leaving the house unless desperately needed, so the abundance of time we’re left with needs to be filled with something. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be familiar with feeling guilt in the pit of your stomach after a day of doing nothing – it’s awful, but when I spend hours either browsing the web, binge-watching a show or even attempting a jigsaw puzzle, I feel as though I should have achieved more. And while it’s perfectly okay for me to achieve nothing, as I do most days, it’s also okay to want to achieve more.

What I’ve learnt so far through personal learning has done nothing but benefit me. Even Google has broken into the online leaning industry, with a host of incredibly varied and interesting courses, though if like me you’re looking to expand your knowledge of a certain subject, it’s easy to nail down that exact niche. Personally, I’ve been experimenting with marketing courses, and looking for anything I can that will help spice up my CV. If I achieve nothing else throughout this lockdown I will at least have added something to my professional qualifications without even leaving the house, and that’s an achievement in itself. In terms of personal growth, I feel more able to answer interview questions in details since I’ve expanded my understanding of the inner workings of concepts I previously only had a fundamental understanding of.

This isn’t all to say that doing nothing is at all something to be embarrassed about. I think my ratio of productivity to laziness is currently at about 20:80, so I know more than most what it’s like to feel unproductive. It’s a completely understandable feeling to just want to do nothing, or to laze about watching telly or staring at the ceiling. But it’s also good to be setting goals and doing something to keep us from turning into hermits. I’ve taken to journaling my daily intentions when I wake up in the morning, with these goals varying from ‘make sure I each lunch’ to ‘complete that SEO course I’ve been putting off’. It’s a great way of setting personal and achievable goals so as to feel that you’ve done something with your time, but also is a way that doesn’t overwhelm you with expectations.

Combining personal learning with realistic goal-setting is the perfect way to expand your own education at a pace that suits you. It’s also a great way of achieving a little something with the abundance of free time we all have at the moment, and will surely benefit all of us in the future. About the Author 

About the Author

Bethany Butterworth holds an English Literature and Media Studies Degree from Portsmouth University UK. Bethany has an impeccable standard of both written and spoken English and is currently seeking employment in communications, media and writing.  Visit Bethany's Blog 

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