I've been thinking about learning, lately.
Sort of general for the last year or so, but more intensely today specifically.
I've been trying for over a year now to find a way to learn Korean that will be effective for me. I tried The Owl ™, and while it worked for some things, their major 'update' a few months ago made it next to useless to use. I've tried using LingoLegend, which when I use it is a little helpful. There are still letters I have trouble remembering, and I know some of them sound different depending on where in a word they appear, but I couldn't tell you which ones and what they sound like in either case.
I've toyed with the idea of actually taking a class, and I keep running up against anxiety about it. I'd thought it was about the idea of being in a class of people, but one of my partners sent me a link today to a relatively-local option that offers one-on-one tutoring in languages. While it would be a bit of a trek each time, it's not super duper far away. So other than possible distance, and actual cost, I've been trying to figure out why I'm still feeling hesitation about it.
I can remember being younger, and at the start of the school year being excited at the prospect of learning. It always felt like there was so much possibility- knowledge in potentia. Somewhere along the way, that changed- from excitement at the prospect of learning, to nerves, and worry about failure. I'm not sure when it happened, though I have a feeling it was somewhere around grad school. Up until that point, while I'd had some issues in various classes prior, there were many more classes where I found myself struggling.
I know a lot of it is that I had ADHD, and didn't know.
I didn't know that I should have been medicated. I didn't know that I should have gone to writing center for help. I thought it was just that I was lazy, or just bad at what I was trying to do. I was so convinced that I should have been able to do the work on my own without help that it didn't occur to me to ask for it anyway, despite the fact that in the few instances where I taught, I would tell my students that if they were having trouble for whatever reason, they could go and get help.
Because of course for myself, the standards are different, right?
So, I've been trying to figure out where the specific hesitation is coming from. If someone gave me the time and money necessary to take the class, removing those as issues, what would actually be stopping me from doing it?
And I think I've narrowed it down.
The excitement at the prospect of learning has been replaced by the expectation of difficulty. I'm expecting to have trouble. I'm expecting to not be able to do it. I've never gone to school in any capacity while being actively treated for ADHD, so all I have for reference is the experiences I've had before- frustration, difficulty focusing, not knowing how to study, procrastination, etc.; I haven't known anything else, so it's what my brain is expecting to happen.
That paired with a deeply-ingrained anxiety response to failure (because when growing up if you identified strongly as 'one of the smart kids', then who are you without being 'smart'), means that it's difficult to find a willingness to invest in something I'm not guaranteed success at. Which on the surface sounds…not shallow, but definitely not great, but when you look at it as- 'It's difficult to invest the energy/resources in something that may not give the necessary dopamine, which my brain requires to hold interest/stay engaged', then it makes a bit more sense (at least I think).
I don't know how to change perspective, how to get that excitement about learning back, the feeling that anything is possible, that I could learn a wholeass language (or at least get a good start at it), instead of the feeling that it's just a matter of how I fail to succeed rather than if I will or not.