Back to school – whoppeeeeeeee!
Yes, as I write this, it is the first week of September. The trees outside my office windows are laden with conkers and the leaves are already on the turn. My farming husband has not been home in daylight for weeks, so if you meet him driving some heavy machinery on the roads around us, please look after yourself!
However, the topic of this blog isn’t that the children have all gone back to school.
It is because I have.
When you are a small business, it is so hard to prioritise the time and financial investment required to undertake formal training. So, I kept putting it off. It is something I knew I wanted to do, but now was never the right time.
NEWS FLASH: there will never be a ‘right time’. So, stop waiting about for one, because all that will come along are more reasons not to do something.
Earlier this year, I got very brave and finally signed up to do an MSc in Applied Neuroscience. The course content excited me, my reading list was heavenly, the format really suited me. This was it. This was the one for me.
My family all said they would support me. My 9 year old said she would take responsibility for doing the family’s washing and, not to be outdone, my 5 year old became the worlds most enthusiastic dishwasher emptier (even if she can’t reach to put anything in any of the overhead cupboards yet!).
So, I went for it.
In the time I have been working for my MSc, I have already experienced every possible one of Paul Ekman’s basic emotions (see here if you want to know what they all are). Plus many others which are not so basic – elation, doubt, confusion, etc. However, one I have not yet experienced is regret. No matter how hard it has been to fit the hours in, how confusing the content has seemed, and how impossible the assignment titles appeared at first glance, never have I regretted signing up for this course.
I can now confidently tell you on two levels, that you need to keep your brain working, learning, challenged. Firstly, from my course content. I now know the detailed science behind why our brain health improves so much when we continue learning, trying to understand and assimilate new information. But also, from my own experiences. I am loving the new insights and encounters this course brings, and the opportunity I have to share that with all of you.
You’ve been warned!
So, if there is anything you want to learn more about, or a skill you’ve always promised yourself that one day you will acquire it. Make it soon. Better still, make it now.
My Grandmother gave me some great advice. She told me that “if you have to have any regrets in life, regret the things you DID, not the things you DIDN’T do.”
No regrets here Peggy, just excitement that school is back in session!
