Perpetual Student

I decided today to finally act on this plan I’ve had in the back of my mind since this “work from home” period and stay-home order started roughly three and a half months ago. What is it that I’m acting on? Well, I am going to start taking classes to continue to grow professionally and personally.

About six months ago, I bought a one-year membership for MasterClass. I didn’t actually start using it until my trip to LA for work in February.Of course, I started with the Bob Iger MasterClass on that trip, but I never finished it and it was put on the back burner until now.

I finally finished his MasterClass, and I would totally watch it again, but now I want to shift from business to something creative. That’s one of the things I really love about the MasterClass concept. There are so many different choices of MasterClasses you can take: from Business to Acting to Make-Up to Cooking, and so much more. Another perk is that each MasterClass has a Workbook you can download with notes and exercises you can do or keep for future reference.

Additional to taking advantage of my MasterClass subscription, I am going to take advantage of the LinkedIn Learning trainings that my work provides for us. As an employee of NBCUniversal, I get to access all kinds of trainings offered in LinkedIn Learning including, both, professional and personal growth trainings. There is an option to take certificate courses as well.

When I worked for Disney, I was exposed to Lynda.com and Udemy for coding courses but I recently learned there are more than just those courses available (and for free). I’ve started to bookmark different courses I feel as though I would like to take. Also, I’ve done outside research and found more options that I never knew existed until today! I plan to use this weekend to really map out what I want to tackle first and what subjects, so that I can take courses and really put into action what I’ve planned out. Although most of the courses I am interested in are for professional growth, all of these resources have courses or options for personal growth as well.

I look at the research I’ve done, the notes I’ve taken on what I want to do, and I can’t help but laugh at myself. Not in a bad way, whatsoever, but rather because I foreshadowed this moment years ago! My family has always teased me about loving to learn so much. I have my Bachelors, a Technical Certificate, and a Masters degree and I would happily go back to school. Of course, it’s hard to go back to school because of the financial cost associated with taking classes and the impact it can have on my career and personal commitments. Now, even more so because of the pandemic, I’ve found so many opportunities to learn without having to sell my kidney just to pay for it!

It’s things like this, finding courses and loving to constantly learn something, where I find myself to be very much like my grandmother. She was a pharmacist, both in Cuba and here in the US many years after she left Cuba. Once she arrived from Spain, she went back to school at night and worked during the day, while also caring for three children. Even after she received her doctorate in Pharmacy, my grandmother continued to learn and expand her qualifications. Whatever training she could take, or whatever certificate she could qualify for, she was the first one to sign up. As she got older, she would sign up for recertifications and new certificates and my aunt would drive her wherever the lectures would be so that she could spend the entire day learning and earnings more accreditations.

It makes me smile thinking about how much my grandmother inspired me and I didn’t even notice it, until now. Thankfully, she inspired me with her work ethic and not her actual job (I truly hate science and math, and medicine, for some reason, requires a lot of those classes)!

I’ll definitely keep you posted on the courses I take and the resources I use. Maybe you’ll be inspired to keep learnings too!