This month I’m reflecting on my experience doing a personal curriculum… and while it may be a little premature (continue reading and you’ll find out why), I still think it will be valuable to delve into what my experience was, figure out what went wrong and what I’m going to try moving forward.
Original plan… courses and terms
I had mentioned in my 2026 Goals post HERE that I was envisioning myself as a personal curriculum girlie this year, and I’ve been anything but (I briefly reflected on my experience thus far in my Q1 Reflection HERE) . At first I planned to treat every goal I wanted to work toward as a course. I started making a very complicated Notion database. That quickly fell by the wayside.
Then the plan was to do three courses per term: Spring being January through April, Summer from May through August, and Fall being September through December. I created a simple, analog term/course schedule using post it notes on a piece of paper.
For my Spring term I wanted to read Building A Second Brain (and implement my learnings), study US Geography and start an online painting course by Talia Stanton (and actually paint something). So what have I accomplished?
- Comp Sci: I read Building A Second Brain and am now reading The PARA Method and I have started to implement
- Geography: I filled out a blank map to test myself on what I already knew (not as much as I’d hoped), bought a set of flash cards and watched a couple of YT videos for memorizing what states are where…
- Painting course: I purchased it as a birthday present to myself and watched the first video (the intro)
I think trying to do the three courses spread over four months was tricky. Ambitious but also maybe it was too much time? Too spread out? I find that the more time I give myself to do something, the more I procrastinate… this isn’t just me, right?
The other thing is that I think I’m just school resistant. I’m done, I don’t plan to go back. When I tried to take a course at the community college around 10 years ago I was not having it. The struggle is real. Major props to anyone who does it! I do like to learn new things, but the structure of school isn’t my jam anymore. Especially when I’m trying better and keeping house and achieving all the other goals I want to check off each month. I think the lesson, yet again, is DO LESS!
Inspiration: Mind Body Mel
Last fall when I first heard about this personal curriculum trend, I went down a YouTube rabbit hole watching all kinds of creators talk about how they were approaching a personal curriculum. The one creator that I really connected with the most was Mind Body Mel and I’m still enjoying watching her curriculum related content. I love the way she approaches one ongoing course, and one new curriculum each month and how she structures it (not super strictly but with variety). It’s very inspiring and I think moving forward I am going to take a page from her book.
Plan moving forward
I still kind of want to do the Summer and Fall terms, but I’m not 100% committed to being rigid with that structure. That said, I also want to follow Mel’s lead and pepper my curriculum with different formats of learning: books (of course!), some kind of media component (movies/documentaries/related series/podcasts), a field trips?? Maybe some kind of low stakes assignment— a blog post, perhaps? The accountability could help. We’ll see lol…
More specifically, I want to focus on art for the remainder of the year. It’s one of my goals to reconnect with my inner artist and make it a bigger part of my life again. I’m thinking maybe I’ll do a mashup of my four month term structure plus Mel’s monthly course concept and do a different type of art focus each month? Idk…
Ideally what I’d like to do is have art as my ongoing course, and then also explore a new subject each month. I think I need the short term push of a monthly goal to keep me moving forward toward success. Maybe my non-fiction read of the month can dictate the topics, and then I can expand on it with a documentary, podcast, etc on the same subject to immerse myself more. That might be an easier way to approach it as I try a personal curriculum again.
I’m excited to not give up entirely, but rework how I approach this curriculum idea. I really want it to work for me and be an ongoing part of my life. I will report back!
Have you tried a personal curriculum?
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash