A quarter year reflection (YLSNE 92)

Today marks 3 months of learning. Okay, today actually marks 12,486 days of learning, but I wasn't blogging about it before.

I'm beginning to believe that I do indeed learn something new everyday, but my definition of "learn" changes on almost a daily basis. While I may not learn a new fact or skill everyday, I grow and change as a human each day because of someone or something I've come into contact with. Sometimes this is even re-learning something, seeing new perspectives, or having an "a-ha!" moment when I finally made the connection to something I may have "learned" several days, weeks or years ago.

While I have enjoyed the process of tracking what I learn each day, what I have enjoyed even more is watching how the project itself is changing me. The first couple of weeks of the project were difficult. I sat down at the end of each day and skimmed through my memory of what happened, trying to pick out things I may have learned. I also set a daily alarm on my phone to remind me to do this. As daily blogging turned into a habit, I no longer needed an audio reminder and I began to reflect on what I was learning as I was going through my day, not just at the end of each day. Now, three months into the project, this almost constant state of reflection has changed some of the way I approach my world. Here's how:

I am a shy introvert who loves independence a bit too much. This means that I tend to avoid talking to people, especially strangers, and that I rarely ask for clarification, directions, or help. I like to figure everything out on my own. In the past three months, while being mindful of what I am learning as I go through my day, I am starting to ask more questions, going out of my way to talk to strangers I come into contact with, and just being more aware of the world around me.

In other words, my project has become a wonderful tool for me to connect with shop owners in my new neighbourhood, have random yet mutually gratifying conversations with strangers on the street and heightened my wonder at even the small things in life. I often claim that relationship and connection with our communities is vital for a healthy life, but my YLSNE project is teaching me the truth of this.

This whole experience has also given me insight into conceptions of research, and the perception of research (especially scientific) as an objective way of learning about our world. I have never actually believed that science is objective, everything from which questions we ask to how we present data is socially constructed. But experiencing first-hand how research changes me and how I view the world has only confirmed what social scientists have been saying for years. I realize it may seem silly for me to talk about this project as "research," but while it is informal and unsystematic, I believe the effects are the same. If anything, this project has highlighted how we view our worlds through the lenses of what we do and think about each day, and not just view, but how we act and interact with our world. This is a nugget I will keep with me as I begin my doctoral studies and plan more formal research projects in the future.