As many of us, I´m still busy explaining why I choose Knowmads and what we do to my friends. (And to my grandparents – a different story.) But while I´m continually getting better at explaining it to my friends (any ideas for the grandparents?) I realize that even I still learn about what I can learn at Knowmads.

At Knowmads we are free to choose what we want to learn. We are free to choose how much time we want to spend on it and it is our responsibility with how many new and improved skills we leave the school after a year. Of course, this does not mean that we don´t have a schedule (we have a pretty crammed one) or that nobody will ask where we are (and why) when we stay at home.
But as we choose learning skills over learning facts we need to want to learn and to step in.

This model of school relies a lot on trust.

My parent´s trust that I will not spend this year partying in Amsterdam. My fellow students trust that I will put energy into the projects we have chosen to work on together. There is a long list.

But, more important and more difficult: I need to trust myself. When I came here I realized that I was actually a little intimidated by the lack of structure – or the lack of knowing what I would learn.
We do have a schedule, but we don´t have a curriculum and nobody told me where my learnings are supposed to take me. I didn´t suspect that I would be intimidated by this as I never felt a need for somebody pointing me the direction (and didn´t want to feel it). But then at times there even was this little voice telling me that I might get lost in the process.

I did it anyway. And not because suddenly I was capable of trusting myself that this would be a bold success but rather because I just tried.
I started three months ago – well, almost – and when I look back now I see a lot of progress and some things I didn´t expect, such as enjoying it to work on Saturdays and spending my Sunday mornings writing blogposts. And this experience is teaching me more a lot more trust in myself.

I know that in the end I still have to choose the directions I want to take myself and in order to do so I need to trust myself to some extent. I believe this is called self-reliance.

Now I´m glad that I´m learning to get better at this at Knowmads.