Let me start by saying I love being a passenger princess, I let my husband drive – I get to eat snacks and choose the songs we can engage in car karaoke to (much to my husband’s delight a lot of the time this is show tunes!) and then before I know it we’ve arrived at the destination without me even paying much attention to the journey at all.
We work hard, life is constantly adulting when we just want to rest, so why not? Treat yo’self or whatever the kids say nowadays. However there is a time and place for this attitude. At some point, especially when engaging in a degree programme like CIPS, self-accountability has to come in. You have to engage and do the hard things that you would prefer to avoid. Just like the children’s book about going on a bear hunt, you can’t get over it, you can’t get under it, you have to go through it.
We have the best students, and we appreciate you being with us for your CIPS studies, we know it is a big undertaking because we have been there and done it ourselves. This may feel a little like a rant, but I have never been one to shy away from hard topics and I feel like this is something that is important to address.
It’s the start of the academic year and we have a lot of new students, new to CIPS and potentially new to studying after a long time. We also have a lot of students close to the end and wanting their final year to be done so they can get back to focusing on their life and families. It’s a mix of emotions from anxiety to burnout, and as a training provider we spend a lot of time managing this and helping our students, reminding them that they can do hard things. We all need that reminder sometimes and I enjoy being a safe place of encouragement for you all.
However, sometimes tough love is also needed. I have spent years of my life not only planning our materials and class lesson plans, but attending learning conferences across the world to get the best tips to make your learning enjoyable, practical and effective for the brain to memorise. Every year we make improvements to our material, we add, update and streamline to help all of our students feel less overwhelmed and perform better in their exams. Myself and our tutors meet to discuss, brainstorm and are always striving to improve.
This is why it can be incredibly frustrating when I see students being passenger princesses in their lessons. They come to the table (or zoom in this case) not wanting to speak, expecting me to tell them exactly what they need to learn, and wanting to do the bare minimum. Now don’t get me wrong, this is a small minority, and I also recognise that everyone has bad days, busy work and home lives, they may be feeling ill, exhausted and incredibly stressed. I’m not expecting 100% every time, we are all human, it’s not possible. If you are having a difficult day, just drop me a DM on the chat or a WhatsApp and I can make sure to go easy on you.
Let me stress though, that learning is a collaborative process. When you sign up to our Diamond classes you may not see the hours that have been put into designing the classes to ensure that it is optimised for memory retention, and interaction to help you learn. You may not even notice the sheer effort that myself and our other tutors are going to, to make topics that are dry, more entertaining and interesting for you. That’s ok, that is part of being excellent at our job. But if you are not willing to interact, to answer questions, to engage in a conversation, to work with your groups and your tutor to interrogate the material, then you are limiting your learning.
The success of your lessons and in your exam is a collaborative effort, your tutor can only do so much, it is really down to how you embrace the sessions, and I appreciate that this will be different for everyone, as personality differences and the wide variety of experiences can be very different for each individual.
Therefore this is what I ask of our students
- Interact with us! We know not everyone is comfortable speaking out loud in class and that’s ok, use the chat function, reactions, facial expressions etc to let us know that you are with us and engaged.
- Don’t be afraid to get it wrong. I actually prefer you to make mistakes in class as you will remember that and will not repeat in the actual exam
- Get stuck in. We will be giving you tasks and as silly as they may be there is always a reason, a method behind our madness. Have fun with your groups, brainstorm and share your experiences with everyone (especially if you have a cute animal to show me on zoom!)
If you wanted to laugh at my silly jokes as well then I would appreciate it (although by no means a prerequisite! 😂)
We care so much about your learning experience, so work with us to make it the best that it can be.
Just a reminder that I am running a CIPS branch event next Thursday 31st October 2024 on memory, you can sign up for FREE to attend live or watch the recording here