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Open-mindedness, sense of inevitability keys to successful adult learning
As long as you open yourself to new things and retain the faith in your own ability to stretch and grow as a person, you will always be able to learn and relearn new skills, knowledge and experience in your life, while unlearning ones you do not use anymore.
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ebra H. Yatim is a woman who wears many hats: she is known as a journalist, activist, public relations practitioner, discussion moderator, literary translator and writer, poet and creative writing teacher.
In 2019, just a few months before her 65th birthday in November, Debra’s insatiable curiosity motivated her to pursue a bachelor’s degree at the Jakarta Arts Institute’s (IKJ) Film and Television School.
Trained in journalism, Debra had already written many columns about film, produced one television documentary and judged various film festivals in her many decades working as a journalist and public relations practitioner.
In 2009, her filmmaker friends persuaded her to get a degree in film. She had always been interested in becoming a filmmaker and film critic, but her tight work schedule did not allow it at that time. At 64, she finally found the elbow room to fulfil the dream.
“Writing’s always been my primary communications medium. Now, I’ve learned to communicate through filmmaking, which turns out to be more complicated than writing!” she told The Jakarta Post recently.
Therefore, Debra had to teach herself how to use the latest filmmaking technology and equipment, including new software and programs on her computer. The internet has helped her: “The most exciting thing about the digital era is that you can simply look anything up on YouTube, which provides not just hundreds, but thousands of tutorials on how to run a certain program or application.”
Contrary to the negative stereotypes about our seniors, Debra can quickly absorb these new theories and practices. Her cumulative grade point average (GPA) of 3.89 out of 4 speaks for itself. “My only downfall was that my laptop was simply too old-fashioned to accommodate the new [audio] technology!” she said.
As long as you open yourself to new things and retain the faith in your own ability to stretch and grow as a person, you will always be able to learn and relearn new skills, knowledge and experience in your life, while unlearning ones you do not use anymore, according to Debra, quoting American author Alvin Toffler.
Debra has also finished hosting a series of online arts talk shows under IKJ, which was conducted virtually using Zoom. She had no other choice but to do it virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Being used to moderate live discussions, Debra initially found Zoom talk shows to be rather dissatisfactory, particularly because they lacked the spontaneity and immediacy of live shows, but it did not take long before she developed a feel for moderating online discussions.
“When you have no other choice but to do something, you do it,” she said. “Look at [93-year-old University of Indonesia professor Saparinah] Sadli, for instance. She needs to teach her students at the University of Indonesia (UI) virtually during the pandemic, so she has quickly learned how to use Zoom,” Debra said.
Therefore, a sense of inevitability is another ingredient to successful adult learning.
Nuria Soeharto, a 53-year-old former journalist and communications practitioner who currently works as a part-time anthropology teacher at UI’s school of social and political sciences, said open-mindedness was a great asset for one’s career.
The digital technology disruption has required individuals to sharpen their convergent-thinking skills, requiring people to have little bits of skills in different areas while still focusing on one subject, according to Nuria.
For instance, if you are a print journalist, you can no longer be satisfied with your writing skills only. Media convergence will inevitably force you to learn how to create audiovisual content, how to have a camera presence and master some little bits of digital marketing and big data analysis skills in order to find brands that will sponsor your content. Yet, despite being a little bit of a generalist, your core focus remains one and the same: journalism. This is just one example. “In the digital era, rather than spending years of working in a corporation to get to the top of the corporate ladder, people nowadays want to accumulate expertise and portfolio in a particular field,” said Nuria, who has a doctoral degree in cyberspace anthropology.
Examples include being a senior consultant or senior content creator with a diverse client base under their own personal brand, a career that requires a person to regularly reinvent themselves with new skills and knowledge. Apparently, being an adult learner also has its advantages as well: one can accumulate enough ideas during a lifetime to connect the dots more easily.
“I’ve already got a hold on writing, so I can finish my [academic] papers within just 20 minutes,” Debra said.
Furthermore, drawing from her experience as a women’s rights activist for many decades, Debra has become very skillful in making, analyzing or dissecting movies using gender theory. She said she would love to make her own film on the subject of gender relations and misogyny, while also being a film scholar under the same specialization.
She would also like to be a university academic and pass her knowledge forward. “Now, at 65, I feel relevant again. My new purpose in life has helped me to wake up every day in the morning with a fervor,” she said.
