Stairway to heaven: becoming an adult learner

In spite of the first shocking appearance of “you should have taken better care of your skin when you were in your twenties” fine lines around my eyes, I must say, I rather enjoy being in my thirties. As it happens entering the fourth decade hasn’t precluded me from revisiting age 16 sans the terrifying hormones and pitifully warped self-image. 16 was the last time I studied a proper science and over the last 8 months I managed to complete pre-undergraduate-level chemistry and biology at Birkbeck College (University of London) decorated with, it is hoped, some proverbial flying colours. Apart from the vindication that my brain still works and that I can write 3-hour exams without the added neuroses that might come with age, the whole experience has been truly awesome. A self-actualising  kind of awesome akin perhaps to finishing your first 10km running race (which I will be doing this coming Sunday as it happens). And what a feeling that is?!

So I’ve decided to do my utmost to keep with that feeling even as the weather outside invites me to loaf about near a BBQ. This means not letting my brain go on an extended holiday and regress absolutely until September when it’ll be a shock enough to plunge straight into full-time study (in nutrition science) at King’s College from doing nothing cognitive for 3 months. Therefore the plan is to keep my brain productively engaged on something it has never liked. That would be...

MATHS! The good old calculator-free kind of maths!

There is a rule that any training that the body finds most difficult is probably the training the body needs to endure most. Maths is that training for my brain. One of the many advantages of being in my thirties rather than in my teens is that my younger self would have balked at the idea of voluntarily taking the tempestuous bull by its horns. Even those who are “naturals” at maths probably wouldn’t gain much satisfaction from simplifying cube roots or solving “real world” word problems employing greatest common factors and least common multiples (because they would find it way too easy, but hey my point still stands, I think)! But, for the record, I have.

To be sure, I was never a total imbecile when it came to maths. At 16, I somehow managed to breach the “top 10%” in maths ability of all the school kids doing sixth form across the entire country (that’s New Zealand, a small place). But maths has never been like music or writing for me: intuitive, effortless, the closest thing to bliss for the mind. And so I have always had barely a measure of confidence with the subject.

But the years since 16 have gifted me with a modicum of masochistic madness that I like to call self-discipline bankrolled by the realisation that wasting my brain now is probably wasting it forever. Some people do crosswords or sudoku puzzles to stave of senility. I do grade 5 (and getting progressively more advanced, mind) maths.

I owe my newfound appreciation of the beauty of logic to my recent joyous foray into chemistry. Unlike biology, which, though very very interesting, requires far too much rote memorisation and room for interpretation in some respects, elementary-level chemistry is relatively neat and tidy, with right answers rather than better answers. So to succeed in chemistry is mostly about “getting it”. With this comes the added and not inconsiderable satisfaction of "getting it", which is quite difficult to recreate in other aspects of life unless that life includes solving abstract problems for a living, which mine hasn’t been. As a hedonist at bottom, I wanted to prolong that weird kick I got from using my powers of deduction and inference in chemistry. The only way I knew how was to, yes, do some maths!

This post is not really meant to be a smug boast of how wonderfully disciplined I have been though it seems to have turned out that way. It’s meant to be my two pence on the adage about how you’re never too old to learn and how it really shouldn’t be embarrassing for anyone to study “foundation subjects” like maths and English that “society” deems necessary for its minions to have mastered before they start thinking about jobs, mortgages and babies. This is because, unless one was particularly gifted in either subject at a young age, chances are that for the rest of us - the euphemistic “late bloomers” - our teenage years did not include our proudest moments of intellectual performance. Certainly not in my case anyway. I spent most of that period too busy torturing myself with thoughts about important “real world” social dynamics like “fitting in” and “how to be thin like Gisele” to appreciate the abstract worlds of differential calculus and Euclidean geometry. Academic learning just wasn’t a priority, especially when it was thrust upon me ex cathedra.

Now that I’m free of said social anxieties, and have lived long enough to see the relevance of the stuff teachers tried to teach me at school, I am deliberately answering the call to improve myself while I still can. Because I ain’t getting any younger (sweet though my wiser outlook on life is). After all, numerous studies on the plasticity of the maturing brain gives us all cause to not only keep on using the one we have but to stretch it whenever possible. Intelligence, like much else about human nature, is more fluid than the old school geneticists would have allowed.

And there really is no excuse not to do a bit of brain gymnastics. Adult learning today couldn’t be easier and cheaper. The internet, as we know, is rich with tools to help us get wise even if it requires a double dollop of discernment. When properly harnessed, the internet is a true leveller, democracy at its purest, and, just as it is a shame to throw a vote away, it would be a pity if we didn’t all plug into this brave new world of learning.

In addition to my wonderful tutors at Birkbeck, a world-class university predominantly geared for adult learners, I owe a great deal of my recent learning to the Khan Academy. This wonderful online education tool was set up by a super brainy but endearingly modest ex-hedge fund guy named Salman Khan who has done a lot in North America as well as in developing countries like India to make education fun and accessible to all.

Had it not been for the hours I spent watching Khan Academy’s clearly presented and engaging videos in biology (among a library of videos on practically every academic subject one can think of, all presented by formidably qualified people), I probably would not have scored 97% on my mid-term biology exam at Birkbeck.

Unlike old school textbooks that are dry and 2D, well-constructed video tutorials not only bring to life subjects like biology, which require a lot of visualisation, they allow the student to watch and re-watch them at any time. The Academy has gone one step further in engaging its users by “gamifying” the whole learning experience with plenty of incentives and rewards. Not surprisingly, this gamification is found in its most developed form in the Maths section, which, as you may have guessed by now, I have chosen to “play”. The subject is divided into pre-secondary school- all the way to undergraduate-level topics that span pretty much everything that’s important for a wannabe mathematician that’s not rocket science. Each level/topic is further subdivided into baby steps that the student gets a handle on and eventually masters, earning points and cute/cheesy accolades (badges and honours!) along the way. Such incentives and rewards, even for a thirty-odd year old, never seem to get old. Nor do the pie charts which show your own personal progression! What’s most important, though, is that the structure of the course is very personalised and it covers all bases. To advance in a subject like maths requires a solid foundation and so Mr Khan won’t let a student move up a rung to doing long division with icky decimals if they haven’t mastered the vanilla version first. Not surprisingly, given my lack of attention during maths lessons at primary school, the Khan Academy helped me uncover many holes in my maths foundation!

By the way, may I add that tuition at the Khan Academy is absolutely free. There is always room, of course, to make donations — which I have done as a gesture of my gratitude to Mr Khan and his team, in the hopes that they keep up the good work.

This post hopefully captures some of the joys I’ve experienced from getting back into formal education as an adult. In saying that, I urge all you adults out there who feel that you’ve stagnated in your careers or just feel ‘old’ and irrelevant in this accelerating world to go back to school because it’s so easy and cheap, not to mention so totally worth it.