december curriculum
a winter syllabus: how i am learning this month
Dear Flan,
December arrives like a soft exhale at the end of a long chapter: a month suspended between reflection and restoration, where the world turns cold and the sunlight disappears quickly. Light fades early, inviting study, warmth, and the kind of thinking that belongs to winter: slower, deeper, more deliberate. It is a month for stitching fragments of knowledge together, tending to long-standing curiosities, and grounding the mind before the new year begins.
Where november held the last shimmer of autumn, december invites introspection: a season of reading, reviewing, learning, and preparing the soil for the person I want to become next year. It is a time for expansive curiosity, for revisiting old interests, for strengthening the foundations of the self through language, religion, history, and story. A curriculum in december becomes less of a project and more of a sanctuary: a space to think critically, live intentionally, and take pleasure in the depth of a story.
A personal curriculum is not about discipline for its own sake, but attention: choosing what matters, creating a life where learning is threaded into ordinary days, and allowing curiosity to change the way I see the world. It is about becoming a student of my own mind.
How I Structured it (December Edition)
I am keeping the same structure as november, though it feels more intuitive now:
Core Modules: life modules for deep learning
Monthly Modules: the main theme of the month (specific skill or knowledge gap)
Electives: secondary topic(s) that widen curiosity
Extra Credit: optional seasonal activities
Field Trips: experiential learning in the living world
These categories guide me through the month with clarity, giving me a structure that feels grounding rather than overwhelming during this icy season.
Each week, I’ll continue sharing with my paid subscribers what I studied, the resources I used, and the reflections that shaped my thinking. The holiday special for annual plans is still running, so if you’ve been considering joining, this is the best time to try it at a lower cost and follow the curriculum more closely.
My December Theme
December is a month of thresholds: one foot in the ending, one in the beginning.
It is the bridge between the year I lived and the year I am preparing to enter. This month feels deeply literary, deeply introspective, and deeply personal. It is a season for learning about the world, but also about myself: through religion, through languages, through history, through stories, through observation.
December, for me, is a time for spiritual grounding and intellectual expansion. The most fitting theme is winter foundations and the study of beginnings: learning as nourishment, study as devotion, curiosity as a form of self-respect.
Core Modules
🇰🇷 한글 Tome I: Conversational Korean Language
My Korean studies continue into december, steady and patient. I have been immersing myself more intentionally: watching dramas without subtitles to see how much I can intuit, listening to the cadence of speech, and letting the language sit in my ear. This is a self-learning project with no rush, but with a soft goal: to reach a confident intermediate level by the end of this tome, to hold everyday conversations about daily life.
I will be focusing more on the writing skill this month. I plan to start a simple korean diary, recording small observations and daily thoughts to improve vocabulary. Beyond grammar and sentence structure, I’m learning to notice the cultural nuances behind speech: the ways politeness, tone, and gesture shape meaning.
📜 The English Literature Canon: A Guided Study in Origins
This is the module I am most excited about. Literature has always been my favourite topic to talk about, but I realised how much I don’t know about its foundations: the overarching history, the evolution of genres, the influence of myth and folklore, the shaping of poetry, drama, the novel, the epic, the gothic, and all the ways writing has transformed across centuries.
I have found several rich resources: curated reading lists, long-form videos, podcasts, academic commentary on monsters, folklore, medieval texts, early modern writing, and cultural memory. This will be a long-term study, a slow chronicle, a journey into the roots of the literature I love so much.
🌍 World History: A Contemporary Study
My historical knowledge is sparse, so I’m starting from the present: learning modern history first, then moving backwards through time so each era feels grounded and relevant. This way, context forms more naturally, and the timeline becomes logical rather than overwhelming. This month marks the beginning of building historical literacy: understanding how the world became what it is, and how narratives shift with time.
I will start my history education with how the world was shaped in the 20th century, making my way backwards to the BC and AD era. I am hoping to make a connection to my english literature module, as it also follows chronologically a part of history. Eventually, I hope to understand the context of the news in more depth, allowing myself the opportunity to give a more informative and accurate comment on what is happening around us.
December Modules
🏨 Hotels as Occupied Spaces: Seasonal Tourism
This month’s hotel research focuses fully on winter: seasonal tourism, ski culture, cold-weather hospitality, and the sociology of travelling through snow-lined landscapes. I will be watching documentaries, curating a winter-focused non-fiction reading list, and examining how hotels transform when the world outside grows colder. This line of inquiry feels atmospheric, literary, and grounded in my long-term dream of writing a hotel-based novel.
📖 Principles of the Qur’an
One of my deepest intentions for december is to strengthen my understanding of my religion. I want to learn how to live more meaningfully in the modern world, to make changes where I can, and to deepen my relationship with the principles that shape my character. I will be following a weekly course that explores Qur’anic teachings, focusing on how knowledge becomes practice and how spirituality becomes a map of guidance.
Electives
❄️ Deep Dive: The Arctic
This month’s curiosity project is the Arctic: a world of ice, myth, ecology, isolation, resilience, and haunting beauty. I will be reading fiction and non-fiction, watching documentaries, and engaging with long-form academic essays. The Arctic feels like the perfect december subject: cold, contemplative, distant, and yet deeply symbolic.
Extra Credit
🎭 Visit a new Gallery or Museum
A day spent in a curated space I’ve never visited before: walking slowly, reading plaques, sitting on benches, letting art or historical objects shape my thinking. I want to emerge having learnt something new, something unexpected, something I can fold into my writing.
☕ Hot Chocolate Recipe from Scratch
After last month’s chocolate deep dive, I want to bring something tangible into my life: a winter ritual. I’ll choose between an earl grey hot chocolate, a mexican hot chocolate, or a peppermint-bark hot chocolate, all homemade. A small creative act and a continuation of research.
Field Trip
📚 A Bookish Coded Trip: London Neighbourhood Edition
I want to explore london through its bookshops this month: visiting new neighbourhoods, returning to familiar ones, and letting each location guide the day. A bookshop as the starting place, a fun drink as the middle, a shop or sight as the ending. There are many winter activities, many of which I mentioned in my london guide. These outings also align with my intention to write more travel essays and share these small, literary journeys with my audience. Here is a link to my london guide for inspiration:
A journal for exploration and discovery starts with travel.
December feels like a soft and studious month: a return to books, history, religion, language, cocoa, and rabbit holes. A time for grounding before the year ends.
Take Care,
Safiya Sardar. 🦢
Keep me updated on Korean Stuff. I am also on it but keep losing the track.
The question is: Do you always meet all the curriculum requirements? What do you do when you don't?