There are very few things that need only be stated once for us to learn and remember them. Usually these things are connected to an extreme emotion – a time that hits us as a core memory. When you’re learning to drive, there’s nothing like the panic of almost hitting a car for you to remember to check you blind spot. But for all the rest of the stuff of life, learning needs repetition and re-wording and re-working for it to stick, no matter how old we are.
We can be so hard on ourselves when we return to college in midlife. We think that we should be able to learn this stuff easily because we’ve signed up for a course that is deeply meaningful to us. We’re serious students. It’s not like when we were younger and took courses that we didn’t connect to just to complete our qualifications. (My school law course comes to mind as a great example of a mind-numbing subject that was essential to be qualified as a teacher.)
Long-Term Learning
However, even when people are eager to learn the concepts, learning doesn’t happen without repeatedly re-visiting the material, and then it’s best retained when we repeat that material to another person. There’s nothing like teaching someone something that you’ve just learned, to help it stick in your brain. That’s why a study buddy is useful at any age.
Engaging Learning With Others
As a teacher, I understand that people need to work with the material, discuss it with others, and explain it to others for it to be remembered. Even people who don’t want to learn the material (young children) will learn it this way. Add a positive emotional experience to it, such as, a fun game, and you have a recipe for acquiring knowledge. Science concepts sung to popular songs, and the names for the parts of the human skeleton as a game of ‘Scientist Says’ always worked for my ten-year-old students.
My Recipe For Acquiring Knowledge
When learning is enjoyable and social, we learn with more ease and we remember what we need to know. As I forge ahead to learn new things in midlife, I find myself automatically doing what I’ve always done but this time it’s to help myself learn:
- re-visit the same material/concepts by reading it from different authors
- view the material in different formats (books, Youtube, Instagram posts, documentaries)
- engage in discussions with others about the material (talk to friends, family, colleagues)
- write about it (blog, journal, email, post on Instagram)
- teach it to others
I try to keep the atmosphere as positive as possible when I do all these things: low stress, not rushed, with snacks and smiles. Unlike cramming for an exam, where information sits in my short-term memory long enough for me to unload it into a test, long-term learning needs to go deep. We can all be life-long learners if we keep this in mind.
What helps you to learn new material these days? I’d love to hear your tips and tricks. Comment below.
Retired, And Now What? 