Wealden Times | WT215 | January 2020 | Travel & Wellbeing supplement inside

Education
smiling, determined and energised from the buzz that
learning and sharing something new has given them.
Start an evening course
Join a club
Learn a new language
Use Your
Brain Power
Make 2020 the year you learn something
new, and you’ll reap the benefits
(regardless of your age) says Hilary Wilce
New year, new start! Most of us feel like
blowing off the cobwebs and turning to
something new after an indulgent festive
season. But while children and young people get this
automatically as they begin their new term at school
or college, adults don’t always find it so easy to do.
So why not vow to yourself to make 2020 the year
you learn something new? In fact, scientists who have
looked closely at the many benefits of learning say
it’s one of the best things we can do for ourselves.
And I know this from personal experience…
When not writing this column, I sometimes run Writing
From Wellbeing workshops, which encourage people to meet
their hopes, dreams, fears and memories through writing
exercises. Without exception there are participants who arrive
at a workshop frazzled, scattered and worried, and then leave
But here’s what the educational researchers say
learning something new will do for you. It will:
1. Change your brain’s structure, improving
the density of its white matter, or myelin,
which is known to improve performance
on a range of mental tasks.
2. Make you smarter. Learning new things is known
to help you learn other new things more quickly.
3. Help keep dementia at bay. This may not be your
priority right now but why not invest for later?
4. Be fun – having fun is a known part of good
mental health and resilience. Some new things
will obviously be fun – learning to kite surf, say,
or play the ukulele – but anything can be made
fun by a skillful teacher, even basic accountancy
or the classification of German verbs.
5. Give you a sense of confidence and achievement.
6. Help you grow as a person by keeping boredom
at bay, making you more interesting, giving you
added skills and wisdom and helping you connect
better with your children and their studies.
7. Give you new experiences, and help you see
the world in a fresh way. An engineer I know
who has taken up geology says his field study
weekends have been some of his best holidays
ever, and he now enjoys looking at landscapes
with new understanding and insight.
8. Help you extend your workplace skills and give
you more earning power. Your heart might not
sing as you sign up for a course in systems security,
but it will when you see the tangible benefits.
9. Help you change career. You might, through
studying, become a counsellor, archeologist,
doctor, or the head of your own design
business – I know adults who have done all
these things and been thrilled by the change.
10. Make you more creative because learning
something new means your brain is sparking,
so that ideas spring up and feed each other.
11. Give you a better social life. Whether you’re
learning to rock climb, speak Spanish or be a
potter, there will be teachers to help you and
colleagues to support you, and even doing a
distance degree at home will give you online
hang-outs and organised summer schools.
12. It will make you happier. Why? Because
it will help you feel more competent,
effective, connected and purposeful – and
all these things are basic human needs.
So make 2020 the year you take a weekend course, join
a club, book an evening class, sign up for something
at work, or plan a learning holiday. Make it something
you really want to do – and then get going on your own
2020 learning journey. You absolutely won’t regret it.
113 wealdentimes.co.uk