So as you may or may not know (depending on how well you do or do not know me), I was a student for a very long time. Now that I'm not a formal student, I'm still trying to continue learning. And so, I keep trying to learn new things be they through social media, videos, in person lectures, or simply by trying something new. Learning keeps me happier and there are so many ways to learn. I learned on the job when I worked for Elections Canada during the most recent federal election. I learn whenever I try a new arts and crafts activity or when I read a book. And lately (the last year or so), I've been learning a lot through watching YouTube videos. Some of the channels I subscribe to create educational content and while some of it might be revision of what I might already have learned in grade school or in University, there's always a lot I've forgotten and a lot of new things to learn about.
Additionally there's the aspect of learning new games. When it comes to video games, the prospect is perhaps a little daunting but I'm taking it on head on this weekend when I'm gaming for 24 hours straight with Extra-Life. I met my initial fundraising goal today (thanks to my supporters! If you want to support the most excellent cause of the local children's hospital, since I'm on the BioWare team, they're matching all donations up to $10,000! This makes your money go much further!), and hope to meet my next goal as well. I've always loved gaming of all types and during my post-secondary education, I didn't allow myself to play very many video games as I knew that they would be a huge distraction from my studies. Now that that's no longer an issue, I'm even excited about the prospect of broadcasting some of my video game foibles… of course I fully expect Jon to beat me in most competitive games we participate in… but still! We'll be broadcasting on his twitch channel and eventually some YouTube videos will go up on his channel too! There are already some videos of us playing Undertale together on Jon's YouTube channel for example.
Last night we played a couple new-to-me board games: Samara and Codenames. Samara is a game I bought via Kickstarter and I'm oh so pleased that it ended up being a rather fun game! Codenames was an interesting challenge. I really enjoyed playing it even if I wasn't necessarily skilled at the game — especially not at first. I really enjoy the fun of learning a new game — especially when there's a new or different game mechanic and these two games offered quite a bit of that fun for the evening.
Another way that I keep learning is going to events and/or lectures where I can hear about new topics of interest to me. Today was no exception though it frustrated me that there were two guest lectures offered at precisely the same time on the University of Alberta campus that I wanted to attend. I ended up going to the one which was about narratives and health/illness. It was rather interesting through it had been a long while since I've talked about literature using the particular paradigms referred to by some of the audience members. I loved the interdisciplinarity nature of this lecture (which is probably a lot of the reason I have so many post-secondary degrees to begin with).
Really, I don't think I'd be me anymore if I wasn't always somehow still learning.