Being a Lifelong Learner

Are you a lifelong learner?

Short answer, Yes!

It would be easy to settle back after the years of schooling and simply drift through life relying on the knowledge we gained. Or would it?

Let’s face it, we all learn new things throughout our lives. Otherwise we would never manage. For many retired people that would mean still doing things the way we did them 50 years ago. And for most of us, that doesn’t happen.

But that’s not what this question is about, is it. This is about learning, not just new skills for everyday life like how to use a microwave, or a web-connected dishwasher. This is about new subjects. This is about new careers, even.

I left school at 16 to go and work on a machine in a factory because my family needed my income. I asked the foreman how I could become a machine setter, and he arranged for me to train. I was still in my teens.

At another job, in my twenties, another foreman asked if I really wanted to be moving heavy press tools around when I was older. He suggested further training for which I’d already shown an aptitude. (I’d been learning about statistics.) I went on a government sponsored draugtsmanship course and got a new job as a cost estimator.

As a cost estimator I worked under the work study department. So, I asked my manager what was involved, and he arranged for me to be trained as a work study engineer. I was in my thirties.

In my forties, I suffered from a heart scare with angina putting me in hospital. The doctor wasn’t happy with me going back to work, so I became a house husband (steep learning curve) while my wife went to college and got a job. Meanwhile, I had an advert through the door for a bookkeeping course and thought, I can do that at home. So, I enrolled. And qualified.

Meanwhile, although English is my mother tongue, we put our youngest son through the Welsh stream at school, and I rekindled my knowledge of Welsh to the point of fluency.

At about the same time I was able to go back to work in work study and quality management. While I was working, I also attended college and qualified as an accountant, finishing my exams in my early fifties.

During my time as an accountant we became kinship carers, like foster parents, but for family members. I was made redundant and worked from home for a while. But then I retired from work to concentrate on the children. I was in my late fifties.

In my sixties, the children started using a language app to learn, but they used the free version, which meant running out of ‘lives’ after so many mistakes, and having to wait until the following day to continue. I paid for the family version and, rather than waste the investment, I started learning a language that had fascinated me since my school music lessons – Italian.

I’m now aged 70. In the last three years I’ve learned, to a fluent reading level and a halting speaking level, Italian, Spanish, French, and Brazilian Portuguese. That means I now speak and understand 6 languages fairly well or better.

So, what’s next? So far, I’ve learned languages with similarities to English and Welsh. My next project is going to be something completely different. Maybe a baltic language, or Japanese, or Greek. I don’t know. I’m still completing Portuguese and the higher levels of Italian. But I know there will be more languages.

Oh yes. And in the meantime I’ve learned to set up a Raspberry Pi as a home file server so I can access my music from any device in the house. I’m not fluent in Linux. I barely know the basics.

But am I a lifelong learner? I’d like to think so.