Having never been shown how to learn or study, I found school very difficult. I could have asked for help, but that did not come naturally to me.
We are all born with curiosity and if we feed our curiosity with information that we want to learn then learning becomes enjoyable and we learn more.
When I was shown how to learn, how to remember, and how to put words into a logical order - I was hooked on learning, studying, and writing.
In his book How the Brain Learns, David Sousa describes that we get excited when we learn if learning is fun - we enjoy it, we learn faster, we learn more, and our learning lasts much longer.
The alternative to enjoying what we learn is to have a motivator to work towards. My first diploma was in policing, and my motivation when studying was to qualify as a detective and for promotion.
The detective qualifying course is the most difficult academic course undertaken at the Police College. I did not think it was possible to cram so much information into my brain, yet it happened.
Next on my list was a diploma in business studies. When trawling through the many courses on offer at University I was drawn to study about learning, in particular adult learning.
It feels selfish looking back now as it was for me to understand how I learned. Little did I know that would be using this when I started my business to develop programmes for our clients. It was at that point that I became intrigued by the human brain!
Again, being selfish, I chose to undertake a master’s degree in Terrorism, Safety and Security. It was purely to gain promotion within the police and to be an asset. I chose radicalisation as my major, intrigued at how a human brain could be so modified is to want to kill others.
Once more I was able to use that academic achievement in my work today. Despite this qualification being the most challenging of all three I cannot recall a moment where I wished I'd never started.
All the topics within this qualification – how do people communicate in secret, can a radicalised individual make an atomic weapon, do CCTV and body cameras prevent crime – are just a few of the papers undertaken.
The study for this qualification was enthralling, it was like reading a novel, completely captivating. I couldn't tell you how long it took for me to complete each paper, time just flew by.
Interestingly, I can still remember minute detail in every one of the papers written for the masters. If you are considering doing any study, study topics that you become lost in.
Only after completing the qualification might you attempt to work out how you can use the qualification in your current work or business. It may not seem applicable currently, but life has a way of bringing things together at some point.
Now contemplating undertaking another diploma, three sounds like a good number, this one would be positive psychology and wellbeing.
Let's see if that works out and see where it might lead.
Learning To Learn!