Things I Should Have Learned Before I Actually Did, Part 2
Last post, I wrote about some things, big and small, serious and not, that I learned later than I should have in life. Sometimes, that “should” meant that I wish cultural norms had been different and supportive; sometimes that “should” just meant I’m aware I didn’t follow typical timelines for my age and demographic. And sometimes it just meant that maybe I could have put more effort or thought into something I wanted to do or learn!
Here’s a similar further selection! Later than I should have, I also learned:
… how not to bruise after getting a blood draw.
Without going into health details, let’s just say that I had to do a lot of blood tests because of my pregnancy. (No big concerns, just very zealous monitoring!) Halfway through, I finally figured out how to avoid the giant bruises that I’d get with every single blood draw (even using needles intended for babies): pressing on the draw site extra-hard for a really long time. Like, five whole minutes at least.
… that there are different ways to teach than the one that worked best for me as a student.
Listen, I loved “Sage on the Stage” teaching. Anything that let me decide for myself what I could ignore in favour of writing or doing homework was fantastic. I hated active-learning exercises that forced me to spend time interacting with my peers and/or didn’t allow me to choose for myself whether this subject was worth my attention. I gave my all to activities that felt integral to the subject, like rehearsing and performing scenes in drama class or peer editing each other’s work in creative writing, and I enjoyed taking part in discussions about topics that interested me, but I despised being forced to turn to the person next to me and talk about my opinions in order to progress with the next part of the lecture.
There are plenty of students like me, I’m sure, but lots more who don’t learn best with the methods I do. And I didn’t understand why one or two professors at university insisted on “think-pair-share” etc. until I became a TA and then an instructor myself. I finally had access to workshops and training that explaining how these active teaching strategies have been shown to help more learners retain more information/skills than simple lectures, even if I personally didn’t enjoy them. And, after about a decade of teaching university courses, I can see how these activities draw in more students and keep them learning.
…that I am allowed to prioritize my own feelings.
I still feel the way I learned this was kind of hilarious? Like, I went to therapy for the first time in my twenties, the therapist was like “It sounds like you prioritize others’ feelings, but you’re allowed to prioritize and ask for what you want, too,” and I was like “Oh, an authority figure telling me it’s OK? Then it must be!” Other people’s feelings are still very important to me, obviously, and, like everyone else, of course I sometimes struggle to distinguish between “inappropriately repressing my own wants to prioritize others” and “compromising on my wants to build a supportive relationship/community,” but my behaviour changed a bunch from that simple conversation.
(If only all therapy progress were so straightforward and easy to internalize!)
…that you can set your own Word shortcut keys…
How did I, someone who has used MS Word daily since at least preteen years, not know this until my late thirties? Word has plenty of handy built-in keyboard shortcuts, but it also lacks shortcuts for annoying minor tasks like toggling strikethrough text. Hello, a variety of unassigned ALT + [letter combinations]!
If you, like me, didn’t know this was possible, here’s Microsoft’s online how-to guide.
… and create your own new-document templates.
There are plenty of pre-made templates for a variety of uses (none of which I’ve ever used unless special printer paper told me to download theirs to print, say, perforated business cards correctly). But until now, I’ve been completing profession-specific tasks like setting up standard manuscript format and typing in my name and address etc. manually. Like a SUCKER!
To be fair, I never thought to look for MS-format templates–I’m sure there are tons of user-created ones out there. But setting up my own lets me include my own little customizations (such as pre-populating the aforementioned name and address.)
On the downside, now how can I spend twenty minutes “productively” procrastinating before I knuckle down to edit a first draft???
… that my experience learning about the Holocaust was not typical.
Like I mentioned here. Most people, especially if they’re not Jewish, don’t spend their childhoods listening to survivors speak or learning detailed Holocaust/Shoah stories and history. That didn’t click for me until, like, a couple years ago. Specifically, during the pandemic, I asked Husband if he wanted to join my family and me on a virtual Jewish tour of an Eastern European city, as, like, a fun thing to do, and he was like, “If it’s OK this time, I really don’t feel up to two hours of histories of anti-Semitic violence,” and I was like, “Really? Why? It’s only a normal bunch of traumatic stories of people getting murdered en masse and… oh. Oh, wait.”
It still kind of boggles my mind emotionally that people I’m close to find Holocaust narratives grievously depressing instead of, like, everyday-life’s-background-depressing; that most people didn’t grow up with the implicit idea that any normal-seeming society could turn on you for reasons outside your control at any time; and that most students aren’t taught that the Allies fought the Nazis not out of moral conviction but because Hitler and his allies were threatening their own countries.
… basic facts about my own anatomy.
This is another thing I’m glad has changed with the growth of the Internet (and how it’s facilitated the work of OB-GYN public educators, like Mama Doctor Jones and Dr. Jen Gunter), but what I was taught about reproductive health focussed mainly on how to have safe sex.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m super glad that I received that education and not, say, abstinence-only instruction. It’s important to know the risks of sex and how to mitigate them, and it’s also important to normalize sexual health (for example, by having teachers reassure us that masturbation is common and not harmful).
But I think it’s also important to teach about one’s reproductive organs outside the context of sex. We learned the basic anatomy of a vagina and vulva and uterus, but we didn’t spend nearly as much time on what one’s AFAB genitals might look like and do when we’re not talking about getting pregnant and/or an infection during sex with a penis. And, surprise, even the most sexually active person spends most of their daily twenty-four hours, you know, not having sex.
(Not to mention, I wish our health classes had given equal weight to the non-risky parts of sex–for example, the reasons you might actually want to have it, like pleasure and how arousal/orgasm can work physically/psychologically–and non-heteronormative sex in general.)
Honestly, I could probably keep adding more blog posts’ worth of this list forever. But that’s a good thing! There’s no deadline for learning, whether you’re after self-knowledge, a particular skill, or important information about the world. It’s better to learn things late than to cut yourself off from them because you’re worried you missed the “right” time.
I’m glad this list is so long, because it means I chose to keep exploring new things, even if I wasn’t naturally inclined to practice, consider, or study them. I only hope I can keep adding to it as I get older!