Continual Learning, why it's important

For a lot of us when we left college or university, there was the sense of, I have finished all the learning that I need to do for my career. I think what needs to be communicated in colleges and universities is that your learning doesn’t stop when you get your diploma or degree. That what you learned there is just a basis of what you will still need to learn throughout your career.

There are so many jobs now that require a certification of some sort and a lot of them come with a need to earn several personal development units (PDU) and it varies depending on what your certification is. What this means is once you have achieved your certification you will need to continue to learn to keep your certification up to date. I know that I have one certification that I need to complete 20 PDU’s a year to maintain certification. There is another certification that I have, and it required 15 PDU’s over a three-year period.

The certification that you have will tell you the minimum number of PDU’s you are required to achieve and some of them have specific requirements such as so many educational versus personal development (community work). When you have more than one certification, it means that you are going to be doing a lot of learning each year.

For those without certifications, there is still a lot of education/learning that happens if you want to move forward in your career. There are so many ways that you can continue to learn during your career and that is taking courses, attending conferences and attending/viewing webinars. All of these are ways that you will continue to learn throughout your entire career. It doesn’t matter what field you are in, there are doing to be times that you will need to do some more learning.

So, when you are talking to anyone, and they say to do that once they finish college or university, they are finished learning you can tell them it’s just part of their education. How many people go back to university or college after they have been working for a while to improve their education.  Another way that we all learn every day is just watching the people around us and experiencing what life has in store for us.

Yes, we are all continually learning, even when we don’t think we are. It’s important to accept that learning is a lifelong journey and not just think that once you have finished formal education that you are done. We all are learning each day, no matter what you think, so enjoy learning and know that it’s going to continue for the rest of your life.

Education and continual learning

You hear so many young people say that when they have finished high school or university that they have finished learning. I always laugh when I hear that because I don’t think you ever finish learning new things.

For some people once they have finished school they are finished with the formal learning but that may change over time. I know that when I finished college I was immediately looking at what else I could be taking to further my education. Now I didn’t take full time school any more but I was one of those people that found going to school, even night school enjoyable. Now that courses are offered online it means that I am taking online classes instead.

I always joke with people and say that I am not sure what I going to do when I grow up because I have taken a variety of courses through the years. I have taken Accounting, Fundraising, Instructing Adults, Project Management and other courses along the way. I find that when I am not learning I am one of those people that gets frustrated. Sure I don’t enjoy the stress of the exams at the end of some of the courses but the reward is nice.

Having the variety of courses behind me means that I have the knowledge in a bunch of different areas and that makes me happy. I recently decided that I wanted to try for a certification that I had heard about and so that is what I did. It was a bookkeeping certification offered through the Institute of Professional Bookkeepers of Canada and to become a Certified Professional Bookkeeper you needed to understand some material and then write an exam to achieve your certification. With having my accounting knowledge from before I figured it might be something that would be useful to have for work so I did some checking into the certification and figured out what I needed to learn and then when I could take the exam. I took the exam in September 2017 and passed it which means I now have the initials CPB behind my name but in order to maintain my certification I am required to take 20 hours of courses each year. So, even with a certification it means that the learning isn’t over but that doesn’t bother me because I enjoy the continual learning.

Learning is something that happens even when you finish school because there will be things that you are going to learn on the job and learn for hobbies. Sure you might not take any more formal courses but the actual learning will not end.