Teaching old dogs new tricks

I loved school. The learning, anyway. One bonus of having returned to high school as an adult (or mature aged student as they call it here) was that I didn’t have to pretend I cared what people thought. The pressure to make friends and fit in wasn’t there. Inevitably I made connections, but if I hadn’t it wouldn’t have mattered. I wasn’t there to socialise, I was there to learn. Not only that, I wasn’t there to merely pass. I won an award or two, I read a lot of books, and I made myself proud. Then I had kids and m brain went to goo.

But here’s the thing teens have over us adults – they know how to learn. They remember. It’s second nature because they’ve been doing it so long. And because they’re expected to keep up, if they respond to one avenue for learning over another, they know about it and do what they can to maximise that potential. If you take a long break from study you can forget how it’s done; a painful fact I’m dealing with at the moment.

For example, I remember how I learned the meaning of my first deck of tarot cards—I put post-it cards on the backs and ran through them as flashcards—so I did the same with my new (much harder) deck. But I don’t remember learning spreads. Or should I say “spread”? I only know one. I’ve used the Celtic Cross spread since… I don’t even know! Did I learn that with the Goddess oracle I had before coming to tarot? How did I tell the cards what spread I was using? Or did I assume as a novice that they knew because I knew? Maybe that is how it works.

Because in over fifteen years of being a witch I never branched out, now that I want to my brain stalls. But how? It asks.

Sometime last year I began watching YouTube while making dinner. I spend a lot of time cooking and it generally doesn’t take much brainpower. If the stars are aligned the food is good, if not *spreads hands* It’s a hit and miss kind of thing, you know?

For months I watched Booktube almost exclusively. That is, people who talk about books on YouTube. They haul them, review them, argue over them, throw them away. There are tags and all manner of discussions, many of which are highly entertaining. I’m glad I stumbled on this. I learned all kinds of things about tropes and marketing and the book community. But I also learned that even the whale readers tend to talk about the same books over and over. One of my favourite ‘Tubers puts out 3-4 videos a week and reads at least 6 books a month. Minimum. And I still got sick of hearing about the same books over and over. By the end of the year, I felt like I’d learned as much as I could from there. I’ll likely keep up with a few of my favourites because I like knowing which books are the most anticipated and why, but overall I’m saturated. Understimulated.

While watching Booktube—with a side serve of Ellen Brock and Alexa Donne—I’d get ads for Masterclass. I didn’t skip those ads because I was learning things. Just from the advertisements! Crazy. So I asked Santa for Masterclass for Christmas. Now every time I’m cooking I’m in a classroom. I’ll do a bit of a review for Masterclass later on if anyone wants the run-down, seeming it’s a steep investment.

Beyond writing craft and getting serious about tarot again, there’s a slew of things I ache to learn. I’m way into astrology right now. I need to learn marketing, especially ads. I’d love to study ancient Polish and Irish culture. Oh and sticker making; how to draw them, use the programs, use the machines and produce a finished product. Thinking of technology, I want to learn how to make my video reviews better quality.

I loved watching book reviews so much, I bet I’d have loads of fun doing reviews and discussions too. Not much makes me happier than talking about books, and it’s a good exercise. It stretches the limitations of my social anxiety disorder.

Yet all these things seem so daunting. Even when I’m watching Masterclass I’m wondering if I’m getting the most out of the lessons. I’ll read the same paragraph in my astrology books four or five times and not be able to tell you a thing about it. Writing this I realise I’ve been breaking the rule I learned in high school – Always study with a pen in your hand. I should be copying out the information or summarising. Hah! Look how you helped me just then.

After years of feeling like the broken match in the box—the burned-out, soggy, backwards one—it’s amazing to be learning again. To pick up new skills and actually have hobbies. It’s the beginning of a new era in the Cumming household. Or it will be, if I can retain half of what I’m watching, reading and being told.

If you’ve got any study tips I’d love to hear them, particularly hacks for time-poor parents.

What are you learning right now?

Miriam Cumming turns large weak soy cappuccinos into diverse fantasy novels. When she’s not practising this particular kind of alchemy, she practices witchcraft and cleans a house that never actually ends up clean. Miriam is currently living in Sydney with her three daughters, amazing husband, and a cat that bites her nipples when she’s trying to sleep.