Create Your Own Personal Curriculum for Spring

Episode 30: In this episode, I share one of my favorite ways to keep learning and growing as an adult: creating your own personal curriculum. 

Spring is the perfect time to design your own “semester” around the subjects, hobbies, and ideas you’ve been wanting to explore. I walk you through how to choose topics that excite you, decide how you want to learn, and create simple assignments and milestones so the process stays fun and inspiring rather than overwhelming.

I also share creative ideas for different “spring eras” you could step into, like a cozy girl spring, healthy girl spring, outdoorsy girl spring, or spiritual girl spring, and then give you a peek into my own personal spring curriculum 🌸📚✨

Transcript

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Happy spring, everyone. I cannot believe that it is already March. I feel like this year just started and I feel like there's still so much that I want to do this year and accomplish that I haven't gotten to yet. But I'm excited. Whenever a new season comes, I'm always kind of doing a little bit of a mental reset in my mind of okay, what do I want to accomplish for these next couple of months during this season? So I thought it would be fun today to talk about creating your own personal curriculum for spring. Basically, if you're not familiar with this concept, it's like making your own structure, assignments, topics that you want to focus on for the next few months. And the cool thing about a personal curriculum is you can do it for the entire year, for each season, for a month, whatever you want to do. And I've thought about this a lot in the past. I've always had these ideas of doing a personal curriculum for different things in my life because there are so many things that I want to learn about, whether it's philosophy, politics, spirituality, economics, finances, so many things. And now with a new season coming, I thought it would be the perfect time to explore this more. I don't know about you guys, but I actually kind of miss school. I did not enjoy school in high school because I was very distracted, focusing on boys and stupid stuff like that. But when I got to college, I actually really enjoyed it. I loved getting to finally learn about things that I cared about. And I also loved how all that was expected of me was to get good grades. I kind of miss that. But just because we are out of school doesn't mean that we need to stop learning. So I thought it'd be so much fun for us to just build our own personal curriculums that are specifically tailored for springtime. But before we get into it, I wanted to mention that it is my birthday month. My birthday is on March 28th. So as a birthday present from you guys, I would be super, super grateful if you could maybe share this podcast on your stories, maybe like a favorite episode you have. That would be amazing because it would help other people find this podcast, or maybe just send it to a friend. You could text them and be like, hey, I think that you would really resonate with this, or this episode reminded me of you. I would be so appreciative. Now let's get into the episode. Welcome to where the woo meets the work. I'm your host, Kayla. It's time to get out of your head, into your soul, and do the work that lights you up so you can align with your highest self and actually create the life you've been dreaming about. What really is a personal curriculum? Basically, it is a set amount of time that you're going to give yourself with structure to explore topics or subjects that you've been wanting to learn more about or implement in your life. I love this idea because it's not like we're going to overhaul our entire lives, and it's really not about accomplishing anything either. It is just about learning and expanding. I am all about that. And I think this is a great idea to implement in your life because there isn't a lot of pressure for it. It can be whatever you want. And I really think that we should always be learning, always growing, but in a way that serves us. Not about what society thinks we should be doing or what other people in our lives think we should be doing, just doing things that we enjoy. So I'm going to tell you guys some steps for how to create your own personal curriculum for spring. The first thing to do is to choose your subjects. We're thinking back like we're in school, and you're just going to choose some favorite subjects or subjects that you want to learn more about. I recommend choosing maybe around three to five different subjects that you want to explore over the next few months of spring. And I kind of think three might be the magic number, but whatever you're wanting is totally fine. And if you're wondering what subjects you should choose, I'm going to give you a ton of different examples later in the episode. But basically, when you're thinking of subjects, you can think in the terms of school. Maybe you're thinking like health or physical exercise, cooking, or maybe you want to learn how to organize your home or do a backyard renovation, anything like that, can be literally any subject that you want. After you choose your subjects for your spring curriculum, next you are going to decide how the learning is going to happen. How are you going to learn for your personal curriculum so that you can absorb a ton of information and maybe put it into practice? There's so many ways you could do this, but my mind automatically goes to reading books, listening to podcasts, taking online courses, watching documentaries, maybe signing up for some in-person classes or workshops or going to a conference. And then, of course, there's always good old YouTube. I know a ton of people watch YouTube, especially the younger generation, but I can honestly say that I almost never watch YouTube unless I'm trying to learn something. I've used YouTube to learn how to knit and how to crochet way back in the day when I was in college, which was really cool. And I also use it for photography tutorials or basically just anything that I want to learn more about. So I would recommend starting there. But there are also free courses on places like Coursera and Allison. After you know your subjects and how you are going to learn, the next thing is to set some goals for yourself. So I have some questions that you can ask yourself when you're designing your spring curriculum to kind of get your juices flowing, to figure out what you really want from this. Here they are. By the end of spring, what do I want to have learned or accomplished? And just as a reminder, spring is March, April, and May. So we're just planning for these next few months. I know we're already halfway into March. And actually, by the time this episode comes out, kind of towards the end of March, but that's okay. You can still definitely have this curriculum because it's not like you're trying to really achieve a ton of goals. You're just trying to have some fun, expand your mind, and learn some things and maybe pick up some hobbies that you haven't done yet, that you've always wanted to. Next question: Which subject or project am I most excited about? Because if you're choosing around three to five subjects, that might feel a little bit overwhelming. So think about what subject lights you up the most, and that is where you can start. How much time can I devote each week to this without getting burnt out? Do I want to focus on all of my subjects that I'm studying at the same time? Or do I want to break it up by each month of spring? Maybe you pick those three to five subjects and you're gonna work on them a little bit all throughout the spring. That's a cool way to approach it, but maybe you're more of a person where you're kind of singularly focused. So you just want to pick one subject per month. So maybe March you focus on one thing, April you focus on something else, and May you focus on your third subject. There's no right or wrong way to do this, so just pick whatever works for you. What would keep this feeling fun all throughout spring? Remember that the point of this is to have fun and to learn, but we don't want it to feel like more work or chores that we're putting on our plate. Sometimes you could have maybe felt that way in school where you're like, great, I have all this homework, I don't want to do this, this is stressing me out. So we don't want to create those same feelings. We want this to feel inspiring and fulfilling. The last question I have to ask yourself is what are some little milestones along the way that I can celebrate? You don't need to become an expert at any of the subjects that you're learning. The goal is to just learn something new. Because I feel like as adults, it's really easy to kind of get stuck in the same way that we've been doing things, in our same routine, and not expand our minds. If you think about what your average day looks like, it might just be waking up, eating the same breakfast, going to work, coming home, hanging out with your partner and maybe your kids, getting ready for bed, and then repeating all over again. Maybe on the weekends you do something novel or different, but I feel like making your own personal curriculum will just give you some more excitement for life, give you new things to focus on, talk about, be excited about, and honestly make you a more interesting person too. After you have set your goals for yourself, the next thing that I want you to do is to create homework or assignments for yourself. These are going to depend on what subjects you chose, but I'll give you some examples. If you chose baking as one of your subjects, maybe your homework could be bake one new recipe per week. Or if you chose knitting, maybe knit three pieces in the spring. Or if you chose learning about finances, you could have your homework be read two finance books, listen to a financial podcast every week, and download a financial planning app. It does not need to be complicated, just some tangible little homework assignments so that they can hold you accountable to your learning and so that you see some progress. The last step is to plan your spring curriculum into your schedule. So into your life that you already have, into your calendar. This can look like setting some time aside every day for your spring curriculum. Maybe at the beginning of the day you have some time, or on your lunch break, or at the end of the night, or it could look like having one day per week where you really focus on it. Maybe you take yourself to the library or the coffee shop where you can get some focused work done and dive into your spring curriculum. Just to recap, how you're creating your personal curriculum for spring is choosing your subjects, deciding how the learning is going to happen, setting goals for yourself, creating homework, and then planning your curriculum into your schedule. Now I'm going to share with you guys some ideas for your personal spring curriculum. This is the fun part. And I've decided to create ideas for you guys based on an era or persona, if you will. So let me explain. The first one I have is Cozy Girl Spring. That would be the theme for your personal curriculum for spring. And the objective would be to embrace your introvert side with soft hobbies. Your subjects could be playing video games. I see some of the cozy creators that I follow online. They love playing video games on their Switch, like Animal Crossing and some other ones I've seen. So maybe that could be something, learning how to play those, watercolor painting, baking, interior design, perhaps. If you are in your cozy girl spring era, it would be great to have a space that you actually enjoy in your home if you don't already. So maybe interior design on a budget so that you can feel good where you live. Or learning how to make your own matcha or coffee at home. I feel like that's totally a cozy girl thing to do. The next era that I have is outdoorsy girl spring. This one makes total sense because as spring is unfolding, the weather is usually getting better in most parts of the United States. The flowers are blooming, the trees are looking nicer, the temperature is rising. So the objective with this is to connect more with nature. Your subjects could be things like hiking, gardening, identifying different trees or plants, foraging for mushrooms, depending where you live. I can't do basically any of this stuff in Vegas, but if you live in a different place, you could probably do a lot of this stuff. And hanging out with friends outside more, so having lunch at the park or hosting dinner at your home in your backyard or on your patio. The next era I listed was Grandma Spring. This is kind of similar to Cozy Girl Spring, but the objective is to tap into what your older self might do. So ask yourself: if I were 80 years old, what would I like to know about or be well versed in? Some subjects you could explore for this could be bird watching, embroidery, watching classic movies. There are so many movies that all of us should have seen, like Citizen Kane, Sunset Boulevard, anything like that. You could literally just look up a list, type in classic movies I should have seen, and then there's so much online that will come up for you. I know I am personally lacking in my film knowledge, and this is something that I plan to work on eventually because I want to be a more cultured person. You could also learn about history as your grandma era. You could learn about world history, US history, civil rights history, whatever it is that you want to learn about. The next era I wrote down was healthy girls spring. The objective with this is to become the healthy version of yourself that you want to be. Subjects could include learning to cook healthier versions of your favorite meals, finding a type of exercise you enjoy, cutting out alcohol, maybe learning how to create mocktails that you enjoy instead, or committing to something big, like running a half marathon. You could channel your healthy girl era whenever, but I feel like spring is a great time for this because we've been cocooning all winter long. And now that we are thawing out and defrosting, there's no reason to not get outside, be healthier. So that's why I had to write this one down. The last era that I wrote down was obviously spiritual girl spring. I had to write this one. The objective with this would be to connect to something bigger than yourself. Some subjects that you might explore would be meditation, getting your own meditation practice going, learning from the great spiritual masters through books like the Bible, the Tao De Ching, the Quran, and I always struggle with this one, but the Bhagavad Gita, I hope I said that right. You could go on a retreat, you could practice breath work. There are so many things you could do. I like the idea of creating your spring personal curriculum through the lens of the kind of person that you want to be over these next three months, which is why I called it like your eras or your persona, because real change happens through identity. And I'm not saying that we should do a personal curriculum to change ourselves. I don't think that we need to change. I think we just need to learn. But I thought this was a fun lens to view it from. If you're not into that idea of doing this from an era or a persona perspective, you can also create your spring curriculum more traditionally by just choosing a subject. For instance, maybe you choose literature as one of your subjects for your curriculum. If so, some of your homework or assignments could be deciding on a list of books you want to read, start a reading journal or a good reads account to keep track of everything that you're reading and your thoughts about it, writing something of your own, like poetry, a short story, or maybe even like outlining your own book. That would be super cool. Another example of just choosing a straight-up subject could be politics. If you have a political affiliation, I'm curious how much do you actually know about your party? If you feel like you call yourself maybe a Republican or a Democrat, but you don't actually know that much about politics, this could be great for you. You could research the history of your party. You could read books from all types of schools of thought. So if you're conservative, maybe read a book on socialism, like the Communist Manifesto. Or if you're progressively liberal, read a book on capitalism, like capitalism and freedom. You might be thinking, girl, there's no way I would read something from a completely different school of thought. And if you are thinking this, I think you need to do it more than anyone. It is so important, especially in our political climate right now, to keep an open mind and to just be well educated more than anything. That is so important. If politics is your subject, you could catch up on the news and what's going on in the world. But don't stay there too long, because, you know, that's also just not good for you, in my opinion. But something that you could do to keep it manageable is to get a politics app on your phone, like a political news outlet that you like, and then just open it up, maybe scroll it for five minutes per day. That's it. Just read the headlines so that way you're informed. And if something really stands out to you, you can read that article. And then find a political podcast you enjoy. And lastly, find a way to get involved in your community. This is not a political podcast, and I don't talk about politics much on here, but I personally would love to learn more about politics. So I thought I would put that in as a subject for you guys. And if I'm being honest, almost everything that I told you guys, all the examples, I want to learn about all of these things, except bird watching. I really don't care about bird watching or mushroom foraging. But besides that, I'm so interested in so many things. And I just wish that we had more time on this earth. I wish we lived for 900 years or more, so that way I could explore all of these things and so much more. I actually have a different list I made of more ideas for you guys, but I don't want to bore you to death. But there's so many things that we can learn about, and it's just so exciting. Speaking of things that I'm interested about, I'm going to end this episode by telling you what my personal spring curriculum is. I have decided on three subjects that I will be learning more about, and then I have a fourth bonus extra credit subject. During the spring, I'm doing pottery. I actually signed up for a four-week series pottery class at this pottery studio that opened up recently right next to my house. This is something that I've been wanting to do. It's not that I've always wanted to do pottery, but I just want to have a cozy hobby that uses my hands where I'm not on my cell phone all of the time, and that is something just for me that I'm not trying to monetize, that is not associated with business or achieving. It doesn't matter if I suck at it or if I'm great at it. It just really doesn't matter. It's just something for fun. I've actually taken two of the four classes already, and we are making two items in this four-week series. So I decided to make a matcha bowl because I love matcha, as you guys know, and a mug. The matcha bowl so far is actually coming out super cute. I love it. I cannot wait to finish it and post a picture on my Instagram and show you guys. I'm not so sure about the mug. It's kind of enormous seeming and more like a bowl than a mug. But next week we are trimming our pieces and then I'm going to add a handle onto the mug. So hopefully it looks like a mug by the end of it. If not, it doesn't matter. That's another great part about pottery, it's helping me learn how to not be such a perfectionist about things and not be so focused on being good at something because so often I focus on those things and it doesn't always matter, you know? The next subject for my personal spring curriculum is falling in love with photography again. You guys probably know that my career is as a photographer, and I definitely fell out of love with photography when I became super burnt out because I was just doing too much and not taking breaks. And I've done a better job about not overscheduling myself and I feel like I'm in a good place with it, but I want to actually fall in love with it again. I want to have that same feeling that I had when I very first started photography, where I would just do it for free. I would let it consume me. I would be so excited every time that I arrived at a photo shoot. That's the kind of feeling that I want to have again. So I'm just gonna set up some shoots just for fun. I'm going to try new things like different types of posing and how I document and my editing style. I'm also hoping to learn film photography because again, it's kind of something where with film you can't look at your photo until after you develop it. So it's more of a hands-on analog activity, which helps you be more present in the moment and really have patience. So I think that will be fun. My third subject is becoming my own travel agent. As you guys know, my husband and I are going to Europe this summer. We are going to London and Scotland, which I'm super excited about. But I need to figure out all of the details, like where we are staying, activities we're going to do, things we should not miss, restaurants to try. And I'm not hiring a travel agent. I'm going to do this all myself. Thankfully, my best friend is amazing at booking flights and travel hacking. So she already booked us our flight there and she's going to help us book our flight back. But I need to figure out the in between, like the whole trip, what we're doing. So if you guys have any recommendations about what to do, places to see, restaurants to eat at, that's very important to me too. In London or Scotland, seriously send me a message on Instagram at Hey Kayla Bowen. I was Love to hear from you. The last subject that I have that I want to learn about, but I'm going to consider it extra credit because I honestly am not sure if I'm going to have time and I don't want to feel like a failure if I don't check this one off of the list is learning more about transcendentalism. So if you don't know what this is, it is a branch of philosophy that basically believes that you don't need institutions, society, or dogma to connect to the truth. And you can experience the divine directly through intuition, nature, and self-reflection. Some popular transcendentalist philosophers who I'm sure you've heard of are Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. I really want to read some books by them, especially Walden by Thoreau. That has been on my reading list forever because this type of philosophy is a thousand percent what I align with the most. This is basically what I believe. So I just want to get clearer on these beliefs and have more evidence for them, more understanding of them. And yeah, that's that's pretty much where I'm at. And I'm very excited about it. I think my personal spring curriculum is looking great. And I would love to hear if you guys enjoyed this episode. If you're going to create your own personal spring curriculum, I think it would be so much fun. If you do, seriously let me know about it because I love hearing other people's ideas and what they're going to put into practice. And even though this podcast talks a ton about personal development and achieving and accomplishing, I feel like this is personal development in a softer way. There are no grand expectations or accomplishments you need to hit. It's just about learning, and you can never fail with learning. I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week, and I will see you next week.