I can be stubborn, I can cling to ideas and possessions and people long after they should be discarded by the wayside. But learning to let go is a valuable lesson I have learned over the years (see, there’s a benefit to being a wise crone).
I’ve been struggling with learning online, more specifically with learning via video. The constant stopping and ‘rewinding’ so I can make notes – there’s not really the natural pauses you get in an in-person lecture – has been driving me nuts, and trying to learn this way is taking me far far longer than if I had a piece of text I could print, make notes in the margins, read a sentence, flick back to a previous one … it’s frustratingly slow for me.
And I have never learned well from video or audio, there’s a reason I don’t listen to podcasts or audio books. I tend to switch off and miss whole sections. Plus, I am really sensitive (or picky) about voices, the only audiobook I have ever managed to listen to was by Danielle LaPorte because her voice was so soothing. I mean I still switched off to an extent, but in a good way. For a long time I’d put her audio on when I was feeling anxious, just to calm me down.
And then, I am time poor. A 30 hour work week plus all the studying, writing, reading I am supposed to do – that I WANT to do – means that taking so much time to simply watch and make notes against a video right now is not a good use of my time.
So I am letting some modules go.
I will find other ways to learn what I need to learn. I may return to them next semester, or next year, when I might have got used to them. But for now I am letting them go.