STAYING YOUNG BY CONSTANTLY LEARNING

Mark Twain once said, ‘Anyone who stops learning is old, whether twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing you can do is keep your mind young.’

I agree with him completely or else why would I be making a one and a half hour return journey each Tuesday night for ten weeks just to learn something new? Leaving the warm fire on the hearth and driving for miles on winding country roads with no street lamps on cold nights with the risk of ice on the road and frost on the windscreen would certainly deter anyone from making the journey. But then again pursuing part time hobby classes of your choice is an excitement in itself.

I have been contemplating signing up for such classes but the schedule didn’t suit me before. This time round the hours are perfect and so I signed up for an introductory course in hair and beauty at the Limerick College of Further Education in Cappamore. Whenever I tell my friends or family members that I have chosen such a course, they chuckle. The next thing I know is I am not short of models to practise on.

In the 1960s and 70s going to the UK to study hair-dressing was all the rage. My neighbour dreamt about it. My sister dreamt about it. It certainly cost a lot of money. I remember those who graduated and opened their own hair salons. It was the talk of the town and you had to make an appointment for an overseas-trained haircut which would cost four times the ongoing rate.

It is nice to be on the other end of the spectrum. Instead of standing in front of a class, I am now a student again. Putting the notes together in a file reminds me of my university days. Carrying the file reminds me of the students that I used to teach. It is lovely to be with other students who are friendly and helpful. Most of all, there are no examinations and that’s the best part.

There are many factors that contribute to the joy of learning.

I used to be suspicious about disembodied heads. To an overactive imagination, they look spooky. Imagine such a head looking at you in a dimly lit room. For the first time I can work on a hairdressing training head without fear.

There is no pressure to perform and nothing to memorise. I can learn new stuff all the time without the anxiety. I remember joining a community drama group and I had to learn St. Joan’s soliloquy in Bernard Shaw’s play. Before long I was having nightmares about forgetting my lines on stage.

The lecturer factor is very important. Geraldine the lecturer is passionate about her teaching. I can sense her enthusiasm and her genuine interest in passing on her knowledge to her students, no holds barred. She is also immaculately dressed and I often tell myself that any product is as good as the packaging.

The element of success drives the student to want to achieve more. Because we do things hands on, there is this feeling of accomplishment. Of course whatever I emulate is far from perfection but the realisation that ‘hey, I can do this too!’ evokes a warm, fuzzy feeling within.

There is this environment of freedom that liberates. Because we are adult learners and come from all walks of life, we carry with us different ideas and creativity. Unlike an autocratic style of teaching and learning, we could ask questions and try new things. The last thing we need is to be in a straight laced jacket where there can be only one explanation and one way of doing things. I am also allowed to use the camera to take photos so I could remember better.

As this is a beginner’s course, I find the tasks manageable. What I learn is meaningful to me and I want to return for more each week. Imagine being in a class where everything is above my head or worse still where everything is so elementary that I get bored.

I remember going for a class on photography because I wanted to learn how to use my DSLR camera better. But the course was pitched at a very elementary level and the teacher did not have a DSLR camera herself. So I never went back after the first lesson.

When this course finishes, I’ll sign up for yet another. There is a plethora of courses and one is spoilt for choice – from blacksmithing to building a bird house. I might take up the Irish language because it is such a beautiful language. Or I might take up Spanish in the hope of walking the Camino de Santiago.

Whatever it is, I know I will not stop learning.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE NEW STRAITS TIMES MALAYSIA 26.3.2017

http://www.nst.com.my/news/2017/03/224340/staying-young-constantly-learning

WHAT A DAY ON A FARM CAN TEACH YOU

Wordsworth’s opening lines in the poem Daffodils are ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and hills. When all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils.’

March heralds the start of Spring, the beginning of longer days and colour. Like Wordsworth I beheld a wonderful sight – a crowd, a host of dairy cows, in monochrome, not colour. Anything in black and white is stunning: the panda, the penguin and my handbag.

My friend Catherine had invited me to her dairy farm and I was really excited to see these lovely creatures, up, close and personal. For a farmer it could be just routine to walk amongst these majestic animals but for one who only sees them at agricultural shows or in the fields, it is something else.

I wonder what it is like to live on a farm. My exposure to rural environments consists of taking a scenic drive through the country or visiting a model farm or petting zoo that is open to tourists.

The closest I ever got to living on a farm was the hope to be a volunteer on an organic farm (WWOOF - World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms ) in exchange for knowledge, food and lodging. But somehow the timing wasn’t right so that pursuit is still on my bucket list.

Now, a dairy farm is different altogether.

As the electric bar rises for me to drive into the farm, I was already tingling with excitement. I’ve seen so many signs prohibiting trespassing, from beware of dogs to rifles, that I felt a great privilege of entering one without fear.

When I entered the house there was the smell of freshly baked bread. Heat was emanating from the AGA cooker - a cast iron cooker invented by the Nobel Prize-winning Swedish physicist Gustaf Dalen. I sat in the kitchen with the flotsam of a bucolic life around me - honey from the bee hives and of course jugs of milk – all products of the farm. The wellies stood by the door. I thought I had seen all this before, but then again, only on the pages of some Enid Blyton story book that I had read as a child.

As someone from the outside looking in, it is very idyllic. It is very quiet and peaceful. There’s this serenity about the atmosphere that helps you realise what is important and what is not.

It is the perfect outdoors to grow up in – to climb trees, to tease the cats, to hug a new born calf or simply to romp around in fields of freedom. In addition, the air is so clean you would think you are living on another planet.

It is also the place to learn to be disciplined and to work hard at chores like cleaning out the muck in cow pens. Work builds character.

Indeed there is a lot of hard work to be done.  The cows have to be fed and milked at certain times. Then there are the long hours, the elusive holiday and the leaving of a warm bed on a wintry night to help out with the calving of a cow.

My daughter once had a patient who is a farmer in Tipperary. She advised him to go to the hospital in Cork to have further tests done. Now Cork is only about 98km from Tipperary. There was a great reluctance on his face. His sister who was with him explained that he had never left his farm in Tipperary.

Farming is a vocation. And we who work in the comfort of the office complain that we are too busy.

But I can think of the feeling of security to have your beloved working close by especially in an emergency or even for simple things like the need for a pair of strong hands to open that stubborn lid of a jar. When lunch is ready, he comes in from the fields. Very convenient indeed.

I think I can have a lot of privacy. Imagine there are acres and acres of land around me. I can do a rain dance in my night gown and no one can see me.

What about at night? I wonder if I lived on a farm and looked up at the night sky, would the stars be brighter? Could I pick out the constellations?

There is this rich essence of life on an Irish farm.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN THE NEW STRAITS TIMES MALAYSIA 12 MARCH 2017.