You may or may not have heard the term “personal curriculum” floating around on social media, especially platforms like TikTok, Substack or Instagram. The term personal curriculum seems to have originated from the user ParmesanPrincess on TikTok, where they discussed what they wanted to focus on learning in their free time. Here, I’ll discuss what a personal curriculum is, the benefits and how to make one for yourself.
What is a personal curriculum?
A personal curriculum is your own personal learning guideline, similar to syllabi in academic classrooms and courses. It’s a learning path/map that allows you to learn new things, expand existing knowledge and build and develop new skills or hobbies. I personally see a personal curriculum as an added structure to your independent learning and self-study, and it allows you to use skills you’ve learned throughout your years of schooling on your own interests.
What are the benefits?
According to the Harvard Business Review, lifelong learning has many benefits. Reading, even in short periods of time, has been proven to dramatically reduce stress levels and learning a new instrument has been proven to offset cognitive decline.
According to Forbes, lifelong learning and curiosity have both been proven to have numerous benefits. Research has shown that curiosity is associated with higher levels of positive emotions, lower levels of anxiety and more satisfaction in life. Continuous learning provides new career opportunities that otherwise may not be available to an individual.
Lastly, lifelong learning has numerous health benefits as well. Learning can boost self-confidence and self-esteem, improve memory and cognitive function, and reduce stress and anxiety by providing the individual with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.
Where do I start?
To start your personal curriculum, you need to pick out your subjects. These can be both vague, overarching interests or hobbies like art or gardening, but they can also be specific questions and ideas, such as “How has music been depicted in art throughout history?” Try to keep your number of subjects below five. I personally recommend two to four, as too many subjects can make you feel overwhelmed or too spread out and make it difficult to really dive deep into a subject.
The easiest way to pick out your topics is by looking into your hobbies and interests. What existing skills would you like to improve and what hobbies and activities have you always wanted to try? Pay close attention to the questions you ask throughout your life and the topics that pique your interest. What are you curious about? Take these interests and questions and expand on them.
Don’t be afraid to let your topics evolve over time. If you start out with a vague interest in art or improving your art skills, don’t be afraid to change that topic to be more specific later on if you find that something about that topic has piqued your interest. Say you started with wanting to improve your art, but then found that you really enjoy working with watercolor, don’t be afraid to adjust your topic or subject to work with watercolor paint specifically.
I have my topics, what next?
Here comes the fun part (in my opinion). Once you have your topics selected, you get to start picking out what reading material, videos, podcasts, articles etc., you want to include as part of your curriculum. If there’s a book you’ve been hearing a lot about and want to look into, feel free to add it to your curriculum. The best part of a personal curriculum is that it’s personal; you get to pick exactly what you’re doing and tailor it to your interests.
If you’re unsure where to even start, the internet has a bunch of resources to help you come up with ideas. Plenty of universities and colleges have their syllabi online that include reading lists and the units. If you start with a general idea of wanting to learn about art history, find courses online that focus on that and look into what they teach you throughout those courses.
Here, you’ll be given units or chapters, such as medieval art and ancient Greek art, that allow you to get more specific and flesh out your curriculum. Also, don’t be afraid to just Google “What books should I read to learn about art history?” Here, you’ll be given reading lists, podcasts, lectures etc. that you can incorporate into your curriculum.
Some ideas and examples
I’ve come up with a few topics topics and subjects you can look at to help inspire you or to help find what sparks your interest:
- Learning how to bake bread from scratch and putting it into practice.
- Reading some of the most popular books throughout history, or literary classics you’ve always heard about but never read.
- Gardening and making your own herb garden in your backyard or even in your windowsill.
- How the portrayal of women in Greek myths and retellings has changed over time.
I have my curriculum planned out, how do I start?
Once you have your curriculum all planned out and ready to go, now comes the time to actually work on it. Whether you’re balancing school or work or both at the same time, it’s important to also try to carve out time for yourself and now, your personal curriculum as well.
If you’re a student, make sure to prioritize your schoolwork first, but if you finish assignments for the week or have free time on the weekends, carve out time to work on your personal curriculum. Even just 30 minutes sometimes on the weekend to put into your topics can build up over time.
It helps me to carve out and plan specific blocks on time on the weekends or on days I have less classes to dedicate to working on my personal curriculum. Depending on your subjects or topics, this can look like dedicating time to reading one of your readings, listening to an audiobook or podcast while you complete household chores or practicing specific skills like an instrument or art.
What’s in my personal curriculum?
Now comes the part I’m super excited to speak about: my own personal curriculum! I started my personal curriculum after seeing it all over TikTok and being very intrigued with it, especially since I knew I could just add structure to existing hobbies and interests I had or had already planned on doing. After researching other people’s personal curricula and reading lists, I created my own and have already begun the process of working on it.
Overall, I chose to focus on four subjects, as well as adding an additional “club.” I decided to start a mini-book club/media club with one of my close friends, and so I thought I might as well add it to my personal curriculum. My personal curriculum is built to be 12 weeks long and take up the last quarter of the year.
My first subject is WRIT 1302: Writing and Journalism (I enjoyed making up course names for these subjects as well). This subject is centered around the creation of my bi-weekly HerCampus articles and includes reading and analyzing articles, essays and excerpts from books focusing on journalism and writing as well as journaling and self-reflection prompts/assignments to keep me engaged and on track. Some of my materials for this subject include “The Elements of Journalism” by Kovach and Rosentiel, “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser and Joan Didion’s “The White Album.”
My second subject is LIT 101: Literature and Reading. Here, my course is centered around reading three literary classics, two more modern classics and one older classic, each spread out over the span of a month. For my LIT 101 class, I’m currently reading “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt and will later be reading “Ninth House” by Leigh Bardugo and “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë. Here, I also used ChatGPT to help me create guided questions to guide me through the reading and to ensure that I’m properly engaging with the material.
My third subject is SOC 120: Social Media, where I focus on social media content creation and learning about social media platforms. This course includes readings and materials such as excerpts from books like “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook” by Gary Vaynerchuk and “Atomic Habits” by James Clear as well as articles and essays such as “Content Pillars: What They Are And How to Use Them” from Later.com and “The Importance of Personal Branding in 2025” from Forbes.com. This course also includes “assignments” such as auditing and tracking social media analytics, drafting and posting content, as well as creating content calendars and planning future content.
My fourth and final subject is ART 202: Art and Creativity. This course is centered around the 12-week-long actual course titled “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. The course itself includes it’s own readings (as there is a book to go with the course) and assignments such as completing “morning pages” each morning and going on at least one “artist date” a week.
In addition to the work involved with The Artist’s Way, I assigned an additional book that I viewed as more “optional” that I would attempt to get through if I found I had time, but that I at least read a few excerpts from. This book was “Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All” by Tom Kelley and David Kelley.
I also used ChatGPT to create journaling prompts and assignments to go along with my reading of “The Artist’s Way” that included prompts such as “When do I feel safest to express myself” and “If I could secretly try any art form without judgement, what would it be?” and assignments/prompts such as “Create a ‘bad’ art piece on purpose” and “Write a letter from your inner critic – then write your reply.”
Lastly, for my “Media Club,” I’m reading the book “Six of Crows” by Leigh Bardugo. Here, I again used Chat GPT to create guided questions that I can answer as I go throughout the book, which helps me give me an idea of topics to discuss during our media club meetings, as well as keeping me engaged while reading. In addition to this book, we also have a list of movies and shows that we plan on watching together, such as “Dead Poets Society” and “Little Women,” as well as some seasonal media like “Gilmore Girls” and “Hocus Pocus.”
Final notes
Overall, I believe the idea of a personal curriculum to be extremely beneficial to anyone who wishes to learn something new or improve and expand on their current skills and hobbies. I find that my personal curriculum adds the structure I need in order to thrive while learning. I hope you learned a thing or two about personal curriculums and possibly are inclined to create your own!