A few years ago, Luke and I took a life changing marriage course. For one of the exercises in the class, we were encouraged to identify our individual values. We both discovered how highly we value education, and though we had known this about ourselves before the class, the act of identifying learning as a core value validated this aspect of our personalities and prompted us to be more proactive about weaving education into the fabric of our daily lives.

If I could afford to be a perpetual college student, I would. Sadly, this is neither cost effective nor practical. But while I’m no longer a student in the formal sense of the word, I consider myself a lifelong learner and continue to “further my education” on various topics through reading, listening to podcasts, and occasionally attending classes and seminars. I love that I am constantly learning (and sharing what I’ve learned) about a range of subjects and ideas. But a lot of this learning is somewhat haphazard. It would be nice to formalize it a bit.

Last month I wrote a post about becoming a minor expert: in it, I identified five areas where I’d like to expand my own expertise, which is something I’ve already started to do. That post got me thinking about the MANY things I would like to learn—not for the sake of becoming any sort of expert, but simply to become a more well-rounded individual. I decided it would be fun to create a learning bucket list of things I would like to learn at some point while I’m on this earth. I’ve made bucket lists before (I even made one for Charlie shortly after he was born!), but never one dedicated specifically to learning.

Since learning can take so many forms, I decided to divide my list into a few categories: skills I want to learn; subjects I’d like to learn more about (either through a class, seminar, or in-depth reading); and things I want to memorize. Here’s my list; it’s quite lengthy and I doubt I’ll come close to learning all of these things in my lifetime, but it’s nice to have a road map for where to start!

learning-bucket-list

SKILLS TO LEARN

  1. Ballroom Dancing

  2. Fluent Spanish

  3. Sign Language

  4. Guitar

  5. Yoga

  6. How to Use Photoshop Lightroom

  7. Floral Arrangement

  8. French Braiding

  9. How to Drive a Stick Shift

  10. Calligraphy

  11. Karate

  12. Snowboarding

  13. How to Sew (enough to mend an item of clothing)

  14. Surfing

  15. Scuba Diving

  16. Knitting

  17. Origami

  18. Juggling

  19. How to Put On Makeup (why do I struggle so much with this?!)

  20. Computer Programming

SUBJECTS TO STUDY (beyond the 5 topics I am pursuing as areas of minor expertise)

  1. Creative Writing

  2. Nutrition Science

  3. Child Development

  4. World Religions

  5. Cognitive Science (Specifically Brain Plasticity and Language Acquisition)

  6. Graphic Design

  7. Statistics

  8. History of Fashion

  9. Christian Apologetics

  10. Generational Theory

  11. Emotional Intelligence

  12. Literary Analysis

  13. City Planning

  14. Behavioral Psychology

  15. Color Theory

  16. Improvisational Acting

  17. Gender Identity/Roles Throughout History

  18. Sociocultural Anthropology

  19. Political Science

  20. Etymology

THINGS TO MEMORIZE

  1. Name, Location, and Capital of Every Country

  2. An Entire Book of the Bible

  3. A Verse From Each Book of the Bible

  4. The Sermon on the Mount

  5. The U.S. Bill of Rights

mahatma-gandhi

What items are on your learning bucket list?

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