What I’ve Been Learning — Jan 2022
Over at Taught by Humans, a big part of our ethos is our love of learning. Learning tech-related things, yes, but also just constantly learning news things and improving on what we already know. Each month we are going to give a short update on what we’ve been learning — here’s mine for January 2022.
January has been a somewhat stressful month for me, having sat final year exams and received grades and feedback from last term’s coursework assignments. Through this, though, and during my restful moments I have had time to focus on my personal development and learnt lots of new things! Here are just a few of them.
Content Planning
After advice and support from Laura, among others, I put together a content calendar for all of Taught By Humans’ social media postings. This calendar allows me to organise our publishing schedule by date so that I can keep track of key events, as well as plan future posts and document the copy used in previous posts. If I want to see how my posts fit into different campaigns, quickly access copy from old posts to take parts from or track the effectiveness of different hashtags, then having all my social media content in one place (which is, surprise, a Google Sheet!) allows me to do it.
The content calendar that I use was inspired by a template available through HubSpot. If you want to take a look at what it looks like or use one yourself, then take a look at their template.
Stress Management
As I have already mentioned, January has presented me with more stressful tasks and pressure to perform than most other months. Although I have sat many exams in my life, few have meant as much as those in the final year of my degree, and I have tackled most with help and support of teachers. Revision and learning, especially since the coronavirus pandemic, have become much more independent tasks, and if you are struggling to understand something or want advice, you have to be the one to reach out to your lecturers and other staff.
To deal with this challenge, I have learnt how to better manage the stress that comes from parts of student life. A key thing I changed this exam period was how I organised my time. It seems that my appreciation of an organised plan extends beyond my role with Taught By Humans! I have always planned my revision for exams, but I have never focused on planning time for breaks, exercise and spending time with friends and family. It is so important — at all times as well as when you are working under pressure — to look after your physical health, make time for breaks and utilise your support network. By including these in my plan, I was able to make sure that I was giving enough time to them.
For more advice, here is a useful resource from Mind about coping with the challenges that come with student life.
Embroidery
This has been a great hobby to have over the exam period and has been the way that I have spent many of my breaks throughout this time. In doing so, I have been learning several different stitching techniques through a project I have now finished. It looks like this…
The image is constructed with a backstitch, stem stitch, running stitch, satin stitch, chain stitch, and a split stitch. Having only used two of those techniques before this project, I had a lot to learn by watching many YouTube tutorials and walkthroughs! The design itself was made by Jessy Ratfink and you can find the template and sampler in this instructional article.
We are always learning, and want to share our passion for learning (about everything, not just tech) in this monthly blog series
