Never stop learning
Throughout May, I have been teaching Building Physics in the course at Umeå University with the same name. The three topics included in the course are acoustics, heat transfer and moisture transfer. I know acoustics by heart and can teach it on autopilot by now. Heat transfer and Moisture transfer on the other hand, is a completely different story. I did not know anything about those topics before this course. And here I am now, teaching the topics that were as new to me as to the students. Can this actually work? Teaching and lecturing in a topic that you are not familiar with is about as scary as it gets.
I did my master thesis in Engineering physics and Media engineering, but my whole career I have been working with civil engineering and building physics. It has been quite the handicap for me not even knowing the most basic construction terms. That’s why I instantly jumped on the opportunity to take over role and responsibility as the teacher responsible of the course. What better way to learn new skills, than to throw yourself into the fire and teach them to others? A couple of years down the line, the knowledge gained will be invaluable and I will be 10X better as a consultant when I expand my knowledge into other technical disciplines.
It’s been quite a long time since I learned something new in such an intense way as I have been doing with this course. I started to prepare in January and have been doing a little every day up until April. But it doesn’t get “real” until you are on stage presenting lectures. So the month of May have been a total crunch with many late evenings and even nights, preparing material. And I had almost forgot how fun it is to acquire new skills! Of course I have been learning new stuff continuously, but it is a long time since I had the opportunity to focus on career development into uncharted territory like this. It felt like the best memories I have from my time at the university from the best courses.
My guess on why I have so much fun while learning, is that I am not the same person now that I was back in the student days. In 13 years, a lot of water will pass under your bridge. And the experience I have gained in various areas have helped me so much while studying building physics. I am so much faster in my learning process now that there is just no comparison with my university days. The experience gained in the “real world” is invaluable. I know why I am learning, and I know what I want to use the skills for. That ensures that focus and motivation is at an all time high. I can also relate most concepts to personal experience in one way or the other, because I am older now. Hopefully somewhat wiser too…
The course is all but finished now. Just one lecture remaining and then prepare the exam. So far, it feels way better than what I expected. I have been outside of my comfort zone for a whole month, and I am really learning to love it. When you get comfortable being uncomfortable, you are developing a kind of superpower. By the way, that’s one of the reasons that I like to record my lectures and even live-stream them. It brings me further outside of the comfort zone, and therefore increases growth substantially. There are no excuses. Don’t give yourself the possibility to do re-takes. Just go with the flow. Just like a football player cannot pass a ball and start evaluating in his mind whether it was right or wrong to do that specific pass. Forget about it! Move on and focus on the goal. That’s a bit similar to the teacher doing a series of lectures for the first time. Highly scary, and highly recommended.