Short bio

I am 29 years old working in Germany at the University of Greifswald as a research associate, and I am writing a doctoral thesis on how and in what ways people tell stories about history. The ability to learn something from every situation or experience that life gives me is my main superpower.

My story

Learning is something very natural for a human, including me, and we learn before we even have a word for this process. I also observed adults and repeated their actions. I was confused and angry as to why they allowed me to repeat things and forbade me to repeat other things, even though they did it themselves. Even today, I sometimes observe the relationship between children and their parents with interest. Sometimes parents visibly forbid their children to do something that they themselves were doing. For example, they teach the child to stop whining, even though they themselves just complained about the long line in the store. They teach the child it is not good to “sit on the phone” even though they do it themselves. It is interesting because it allows me to reflect on the ways I learn.

I am a practical person – I learn by watching what others do. Therefore, I must always pay attention to the people I work and study with daily.

Awareness in the learning process is a strange thing, precisely because we don’t only learn consciously.

I remember when I was first taught the word learning when I started school. First, it ruined the joy of learning – why would I want to do something that I am forced to do? I remember my discussions with my mother, who was upset about the fact that I was coming home with empty notebooks because I had not paid attention to the teachers. I don't remember how she convinced me, but in the end, I finished elementary school. And yet, I still didn't like something in her definition and that of the teachers because I remember myself already experiencing a profound crisis in university.

“What am I actually learning and why,” I asked myself at the time and could not find the answer.

That's when I slowly started building my awareness of learning from scratch. I started with questions – What are my strengths? What do I learn in general? (Later I learnt to distinguish knowledge from skills). I completed various psychology tests to understand how I learn and how my brain perceives information.

Around that time, I fell back in love with the learning process. I learnt not to study to please my parents or to compete with my colleagues for higher grades in e-studies, but slowly I formulated who I was. For me, for example, learning is a big part of my personal identity.

I am happy to work where I can learn – both as a professional and as a person. I enjoy working in teams where there are more experienced and knowledgeable colleagues than me – I capture not only their knowledge but also their life experience. I analyse, for example, how they deal with difficult situations, how they communicate, and how they manage their own and others' emotions. The times when I have worked or studied abroad have also given me great experience. I have had the greatest experience in Norway and Germany, but I have also spent long periods of time in Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland, especially when I was lucky enough to work in more international collectives and observed how different traditions – in education and life – collide and re-evaluate each other. I recommend to everyone and always use the opportunity to go on study or practice exchange trips to foreign countries.

I got acquainted with the concept of lifelong learning when I worked for some time with higher education policy making. At first, I was even sceptical; subconsciously, it likely reminded me of the already mentioned first experience when someone tried to teach me what education was.

However, studying this topic more closely, I discovered a lot close and familiar. Adult education allows one to adapt the opportunities provided to one's needs directly. For example, the university where I work recently announced the possibility of taking an online course aimed specifically at people working in the academy. You can study the entire course or choose the modules that interest you, on the one hand, delving into science communication or management issues, and on the other hand, acquiring stress management or communication and presentation skills. Each module is taught by an individual instructor who has spent much of his/her life and career delving into that subject.