By AGNES PASCO CONATY
Credit: Agnes Pasco Conaty
Curiosity — that drive to learn an unfamiliar word, experiment with crafting, try food you haven’t tasted before, or even just walk around a different block — can take us on rewarding learning adventures throughout our lives. As Albert Einstein famously said, “The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size.”
And sometimes curiosity prompts us to pick up something we’d put down years before. For me, it was rocks. I’d studied geology as an undergraduate and returned to it many years later when I started teaching environmental science. Suddenly, I was all but glued to my magnifying glass as I marveled at the colors, textures and details, even in rocks that looked ordinary at first glance. And I started wondering about so much: How does petrified wood become a rock? Why are tiny shells embedded in sedimentary rocks? One question led to another, and another. My curiosity about rocks now knows no bounds.
So many of us lead busy lives; we may think we could never find time to dabble with a new hobby, let alone dive head first into learning a new language. But grabbing even a moment here or there can add up to big rewards over time. I have a friend who decided to teach herself one new knot each month for a year — and she stuck with it, mastering not just 12, but more than two dozen new knots that year. Now, more than a decade later and still following her curiosity, she’s gained not only skill a whole lot of knots, but the confidence that can come with taking on a challenge.
We have abundant resources for exploring and expanding our curiosity, right at our fingertips, and many of them are geared to older adults. Montgomery College’s Lifelong Learning Institute, based at the college’s Rockville campus, (tinyurl.com/2efvsam8) offers a treasure chest of courses, from professional development to personal enrichment. Interested in presidential history? Want to learn how to raise orchids? Eager to get a handle on your personal finances? The institute may have just what you’re looking for.
Prince George’s Community College, in Largo, also offers programs for seniors (tinyurl.com/2s4c8usy). And right here at home, the Laurel-Beltsville Senior Activity Center, which is run by Prince George’s County Department of Parks and Recreation, offers classes for adults 60 years or older ranging from belly dancing and Zumba to ceramics, drawing and more. (For a full calendar of fall classes at the center, go to tinyurl.com/37sejjtu.)
Our Laurel Branch Library, part of the county’s Memorial Library System (tinyurl.com/yc5nkd5a), offers a rich selection of free, online courses to anyone who has a library card. (I recently started a course on practical geology to satisfy my fascination with rocks.) The library is constantly expanding not only its physical collection of books, but its virtual offerings as well. And with that same library card, you can create an account with Kanopy (kanopy.com/en), a free streaming service that collaborates with libraries and universities throughout the country to bring thousands of films right to your home. You, too, can immerse yourself in the world of documentaries — or even become that movie trivia buff you’ve always wanted to be.
I also enthusiastically recommend exploring the internet to whet (and even satisfy!) your appetite for new adventures in learning. Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org) has tens of thousands of free e-books, including most of the great books of the Western world and digital copies of hard-to-find editions, that you can read online or download. Coursera (coursera.org) is an online consortium of more than 300 colleges and universities offering career training and degree programs (at cost) and a huge selection of free courses. And so many colleges and universities independently offer online learning, too; all it takes is an easy search to start opening those doors.
As a child, I was so curious about the world around me, and I loved learning. I still do. And I’ve always encouraged my son (and my students!) to keep learning, too. Being open to possibilities — staying curious — is a lifelong journey worth taking.
