For a long time, I associated learning with formal education. There was a course to follow, a teacher deciding what came next, assignments to complete, and a qualification waiting at the end. Learning had a structure created by somebody else, and success meant keeping up with the timetable you had been given.
But the older I become, the more interested I am in a different kind of education: the one I create for myself.
There are subjects I want to understand because they speak to the woman I am becoming. There are skills I want to develop because they would make my life richer, more creative, or more meaningful. There are ideas I want to explore simply because they have caught my attention, and I refuse to let go.
None of them requires me to enrol at a university or wait for somebody else to decide that I am ready. I can choose what I want to learn, how deeply I want to explore it, and what place it will hold in my life.
This is why I have begun creating my own personal curriculum and, within it, completing a 30-by-30 every month: thirty minutes a day for thirty days, devoted to something I genuinely want to learn.
Becoming the Author of My Own Education
A personal curriculum is exactly what it sounds like: a self-directed plan for learning about the subjects that matter to you. Unlike a traditional curriculum, it does not have to follow an institution’s timetable, lead to a qualification, or satisfy somebody else’s definition of useful.
It begins with curiosity.
I describe personal learning as something that can start with a question rather than a rigid goal. Instead of beginning with pressure to master a subject or produce a particular outcome, we can begin by asking what we are curious about, what we want to understand, and where that question might lead us. She also suggests moving through flexible phases rather than imposing stressful deadlines, allowing the learning to deepen naturally over time.
I love this approach because it gives learning room to breathe. It allows us to follow unexpected interests, change direction, and spend more time with the parts that fascinate us. We are not sitting an examination at the end. We do not have to prove that our curiosity was productive enough to deserve our time.
That feels especially important in midlife.
By this stage, many women have spent decades learning what they needed to know for their careers, families, relationships, and responsibilities. We have learned how to keep things running, solve problems, care for other people, and adapt when life changes without asking for our permission.
A personal curriculum invites us to ask a more intimate question: What do I want to learn now, for me?
