I get paid to learn

If students pay to University to learn, I get paid to learn. The only difference is: I will not get a degree after a few years as a proof of this learning.

I teach at a University. That is my job and I get paid to do that (and do research and admin work). But I am a keen learner too. I offer new courses to my students every semester. They are new even for me. Before each class, I am a student, intently reading widely so that I am definitely ahead of my students. In class, I am a facilitator, trying to help students learn the subject. Thus, I learn as I teach.

If you want to learn a new thing, offer that as a course. You will be forced to learn since you cannot go to a class unprepared.

Last semester, I offered a UG course on NGO Management and a Ph.D. course on Governance of Higher Education in India. This semester, I am teaching Social Entrepreneurship to UG and Business Communication to PG students. Most of my courses emanate from my interest in the themes or my brush with these themes during my life. My Ph.D. was in Innovations in Education and its content was not directly relevant for anything I am teaching. What PhD provided me was a framework to learn novel things and make connections. Now, I use that to enhance my own learning while simultaneously helping my students learn.

PhD was my first degree where I had made a very conscious choice to study in a specific field (education). Even during my PhD, I felt the same way about learning: I love books, I love reading, and I was being paid (a stipend) by IIM-A to do what I loved. Academics, in that sense, has proven to be a very satisfying vocation for me.

I hope that I will have many more productive years as a 'paid' student.