Setting your 'Personal Curriculum'
The people yearn for pedagogy
A new bookish trend is taking social media by storm. Forget the ‘TBR’ (‘to-be-read’ list), the yearly reading challenges, and the Goodreads awards. Make way for the ‘Personal Curriculum’ — a term coined by TikTok creator, Elizabeth Jean.
The Personal Curriculum is exactly what it sounds like: it’s a scholastic structure consisting of reading lists, projects, rules, and homework which you set for yourself.
In many ways, it’s great. It encourages people to be intentional about how they spend their spare time. It empowers them to embrace self-study, without having to fork out for a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree. It makes learning accessible, personal, and fun. It harks back to the studia humanitatis of the Renaissance, when studying the arts in one’s spare time was simply the done thing.
But, like every internet vogue, the ‘Personal Curriculum’ has pitfalls and precedents. If you want to get the most out of your personal academic pursuits, you have to be deliberate about how you go about it. You need purpose, structure, and goals.
For four years, I worked as a supervisor at the University of Cambridge, teaching English to undergraduates and postgraduates. During that time, I designed a number of curricula (for instance, ‘sex and gender in the 18th century’, ‘Romanticism’, and ‘art criticism’), and learned exactly what makes a good humanities course!
…and also what really, really doesn’t.