Rediscovering the joy of learning at 54 – Nicky Rennie

Nicky Rennie is loving her real estate studies. Photo / 123rf

I was 18 years old when I was last a student.

It was a means to an end. My desire to be a broadcaster was a light that burned brightly in me from a young age and so I knew I would need to get a good grounding and go to the New Zealand Broadcasting School in Christchurch.

My number one goal was to get into the industry as soon as possible. The learnings were a catalyst for this to happen.

Having already worked at River City Radio here in Whanganui when I was 17, I knew the majority of the lessons to be learned would be imparted on the job, so there was no need for letters after my name. Being a student wasn’t the goal; earning a living in my chosen field was.

My older sister is what is considered an academic. She has two Master’s degrees and is now studying for her doctorate. It became clear from her teenage years that she was exceptionally academically gifted. She was not only head girl of Whanganui High School in 1987, she was dux as well.

Striving from an academic perspective has been one of her life’s goals. She doesn’t just “belong” in the academic environment; she excels in it. It’s as natural as breathing to her. It is part of the fabric of who she is.

It’s really easy to compare yourself to your siblings. In my case, I always worried that I wasn’t as clever as she was (and is). However, my appreciation of different types of intelligence is something that has grown with age (and wisdom).

Having decided to pivot at the age of 54 and study to be a real estate agent, I’ve learned that my attitude towards learning is exactly the same now as it was when I was 18.

With the decision made to be a real estate agent, I now need to learn and qualify so that I can start the final chapter of my working life.

Again, doing the papers is the means to an end. What I didn’t expect was that I would love the process of learning and I’m actually retaining the information. It’s good at whatever age to be able to surprise yourself and I really have. In the past two weeks, I have also gone to a yoga class – who are you and what have you done with Nicky?

There are similarities between the broadcasting and communications qualification that I achieved in the ′90s and becoming a qualified real estate agent now.

The skills that I’m learning are tangible and will be implemented on a daily basis.

It’s the reason that I would sit in any maths class with fractions or the Pythagoras theory and mentally shut down. My brain wasn’t wired like that and I didn’t feel that I would ever use it in my daily life.

My attitude to learning is that it has to have a practical application or I don’t see any purpose for it. It doesn’t mean that I’m as thick as two planks, it just means that I have my own style of learning. It has to be necessary to what I will be doing in my daily life. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe is picking up what I’m putting down. “In the end, we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply.”

There’s all sorts of clever. This wasn’t a lesson that was imparted when I was at school. It was all about the mark you got.

In case you’re wondering, there are actually considered to be nine types of intelligence, according to Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinaesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic and existential.

These represent different ways in which individuals process information and interact with the world. You don’t have to be one or the other, either. Most people are a mixture of a few of these.

I love success stories where people have left school because it wasn’t for them, then found their bliss and lived happily ever after. I love it when people who have been told that they won’t amount to much absolutely slay it and become leaders in industry, and I love it when people who were labelled a geek at school have triumphed in the world of IT when it had negative connotations at the time they were facing ridicule in the schoolyard.

IQ versus EQ was something of a revelation as well. The thought that just because you get A’s your whole life doesn’t mean that you have common sense or that you have a natural affinity with other people.

People all have an opinion of real estate agents and the industry itself.

I asked if I could do my study in an agency so I could learn on the job as well as through my study and I’m loving that too. It has cemented that I have made 100% the right choice about my next career.

It is an industry where your success is the sum of the parts. Your parts. Your past career choices, everything you have learned in life so far, the skills you have amassed and the lessons you have learned.

At the end of the day, people buy from people, not necessarily an A-plus in a chemistry exam.