• Question: is there any further education you would like to complete

    Asked by anon-204920 to Sally, Lucy, Louise, James, David, Dan on 6 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: James Munro

      James Munro answered on 6 Mar 2019:


      Oh yes! I would love to take a degree in chemistry, physics and maths. I would like to train to become an outdoors person where I could survive and live in the wilderness. I wish I could read more than two languages. I am not good enough at playing piano or saxophone and I want to take more lessons. With Psychology there are so many different angles I know very little about. The other scientists in this Zone are all experts and very intelligent people, and I would be fascinated to be as qualified as they were in their own areas.

      So much to learn, too little time!

      I don’t think you will ever reach a stage where you say “Ok, I’ve learned enough, time to stop.” There are always mountains to climb, just so you can see what is over the other side.

    • Photo: Lucy Maddox

      Lucy Maddox answered on 6 Mar 2019:


      Yes! I totally agree with James – so much stuff I’d love to learn about! I’m doing some distance learning at the moment – a course about organisational psychology – so that’s really interesting. I am especially interested in how work can affect people’s mental health. So for that I watch lectures online and take part in online chats about the different subjects – a bit like this! (But the questions for IAS are much more interesting!)
      I’d love to be better at other languages too, and there’s loads of different dance styles I’d like to learn, the list goes on….! 🙂
      I think learning is one of the really great pleasures in life and a real luxury to have the time to do it (I know it doesn’t always feel like that when you’re at school!)

    • Photo: David Chadwick

      David Chadwick answered on 6 Mar 2019:


      I have never stopped. I don’t believe that anyone should ever stop being educated. Formal qualifications like degrees are necessary, but education is more than this. You should be continually educating yourself about your job, your relationships, politics, world development, climate change… the list is endless. Learn more about Donald Trump and be amazed at what you discover 🙂

      I started learning Spanish two years ago, and this is well after I was past retirement age. I heard about a retired judge in his 90s who was still picking up a book in a different foreign language each year and learning how to read it. Imagine that.

      So never stop educating yourself.

    • Photo: Dan Taylor

      Dan Taylor answered on 6 Mar 2019:


      I think after my PhD I might take a break for a little while, when i’m finished it’ll have been four years full time education and around 5 years part time education. So I think I deserve some time off afterwards! But I do think that learning and education is more than degrees and qualifications also. I read a lot of philosophy and politics, I learn a lot about these sorts of topics this way, but I am by no means “qualified” and that’s totally okay! It’s helped to inform and educate other bits of my personal (and sometimes professional) life.
      I would consider doing some kind of course or qualification looking at behavioural genetics at some point in the future. As an evolutionary psychologist, genes play a huge role in behaviour, getting a deeper understanding of this could be really useful to help me further develop my own studies.

    • Photo: Sally Tilt

      Sally Tilt answered on 6 Mar 2019: last edited 6 Mar 2019 9:24 pm


      Great question – and really enjoyed the answers above – and I agree Dan – I think you’ve definitely earned a break after your PhD!

      A bit like James wrote – the more you know, the more you realise that there are massive areas that you don’t know about! As time goes on, I’m much more comfortable saying ‘I don’t know much about that’.

      I’ve recently been learning more about a couple of approaches to therapy – ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) and CFT (Compassion Focused Therapy), and am part of a group of forensic psychologists who are exploring how these approaches might be applied to work in our field. I’m also exploring the possibility of starting a doctorate study on the subject of people who start fires.

      I do a lot of driving as part of my job – so I’m a bit of a podcast fan – there are lots of great podcasts about psychology – and it feels like a really easy way to learn about new topics! (I’m looking forward to trying out Lucy’s podcasts 🙂 )

    • Photo: Louise Rodgers

      Louise Rodgers answered on 11 Mar 2019:


      I agree with the other psychologists wholeheartedly! Learning is such a joy in itself and I don’t think I could ever imagine myself sitting back and saying, ‘yep, I know it all now! Nothing left for me to find out about!’

      I would love to study more about history and learn another language (Icelandic maybe). There is a lot of Scandinavian influence on the local language in Hull, where I live and unravelling that would be so interesting. In fact there is a project about it called Gersum https://www.gersum.org where people are doing just that.

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