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!

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

What items are on your learning bucket list?

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save