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Self-Education
Gosling
Looking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered User regular
Looking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered User regular
This thread, like all things, is Anne Geddes' fault. My beat at work does not include, but passes, a calendar display. You have all the quintessial calendar topics: puppies, Tinkerbell (who is on everything in the store including shampoo, clocks and windshield covers), America Fuck Yeah, Yay Local Sports Team.
And Anne Geddes. Baby heads in flowers. And it's near the $10 Wal-Mart "art" (which I DO stock). I'm between the two when it just hits me like a sack of potatoes: "I have a college degree, and I am up at 2 in the morning between Anne Geddes, poor excuses for art deco, and still lifes, the first kind of non-random-smear paintings we did in 1st fucking grade." It just made me want to run screaming into the arms of a museum somewhere.
Which I'd probably do, if I hadn't already gone to the Milwaukee Public Museum twice in recent years and seen that the stuff in Visit #1 and Visit #2 were really very similar- and, for that matter, not overly different from how it was when I visited in grade school field trips. But I'm still racking my brain trying to come up with somewhere to go to apologize to my eyeballs for having to see that.
Which leads to the topic: self-education. By this I mean any method of trying to teach yourself stuff: museums, libraries, trolling around on Wikipedia, hell, Carmen Sandiego games if that's what does it for you. Anything of that sort. How often do you do that kind of thing, what kinds do you do, how useful do you find it to be, is where you live any help at all in encouraging it?
And Anne Geddes. Baby heads in flowers. And it's near the $10 Wal-Mart "art" (which I DO stock). I'm between the two when it just hits me like a sack of potatoes: "I have a college degree, and I am up at 2 in the morning between Anne Geddes, poor excuses for art deco, and still lifes, the first kind of non-random-smear paintings we did in 1st fucking grade." It just made me want to run screaming into the arms of a museum somewhere.
Which I'd probably do, if I hadn't already gone to the Milwaukee Public Museum twice in recent years and seen that the stuff in Visit #1 and Visit #2 were really very similar- and, for that matter, not overly different from how it was when I visited in grade school field trips. But I'm still racking my brain trying to come up with somewhere to go to apologize to my eyeballs for having to see that.
Which leads to the topic: self-education. By this I mean any method of trying to teach yourself stuff: museums, libraries, trolling around on Wikipedia, hell, Carmen Sandiego games if that's what does it for you. Anything of that sort. How often do you do that kind of thing, what kinds do you do, how useful do you find it to be, is where you live any help at all in encouraging it?
I have a new soccer blog The Minnow Tank. Reading it psychically kicks Sepp Blatter in the bean bag.
Gosling on
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A modern (read: internets) way of doing this is Wikipedia-hoping. Start on a topic you are interested in, and click links in the article to learn more. I usually open them in tabs. I've learned a great bit of information doing this. When Pope John Paul II died, I did this and knew more about the 'process' more than any Catholic I knew at the time.
Also - libraries.
Download university lectures to your iPod as podcasts.
It's well worth the price of admission: which is to say, free.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Reading of any kind will put you ahead of 90 of the slack-jawed functional illiterates
You can learn a lot by wandering around wikipedia for hours on end. Some of it will even be true.
I don't know if this counts as self education but I find cool reading lists of stuff I've never heard of. Select a few off the list and hit up the local library. I was pretty surprised the list in the writing forum has some great stuff in it.
edit: this seems relevant. I first became interested in self-education when I read Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. If he can do it, why can't I?
Shogun Streams Vidya
I'm a ray of sunshine
Especially with that attitude.
Shogun Streams Vidya
If Benjamin Franklin was God's special little snow flake, he wouldn't have had to educate himself, eh.
Rinse, repeat.
I've been known to browse the dictionary for interesting words, too.
Really all you need is intellectual curiosity; you'll never run short on things to learn from if you aren't a complete idiot
And I follow material science developments pretty closely. To the point of looking up papers and such, but it's not like that is useful or anything. I don't do anything with that, much like my political reading.
Man, this happens too much for me too. Especially like, the night before a day in which I have to wake up to go to class.
Currently DMing: None
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That said, I'm to fucking busy being a polydidact to be an auto-.
I do a large amount of Wikipedia hopping myself, and I watch a lot of foreign films, from nerd standby anime to El Mariachi, to Pan's Labyrinth and various other less well known stuff. It's an entertaining window into other cultures.
I listen to a crap-load of NPR, and I think childhood exposure is largely responsible for my desire to become a cultured individual. I haven't done much listening to iTunes lectures, but I might get into that. Similarly, NPR podcasts rule.
Crossword puzzles and trivia are an excellent way to develop skills in recall of well, trivial, facts, and to enhance vocabulary.
I read a ton. In my experience, it doesn't even have to be academic in nature, by far the majority of my bookshelves are popular science-fiction and fantasy. Earlier in life, when reading ahead of my age (one of the few things I did better than adequately) it helped me develop vocabulary. Later it can provide endless fodder for analysis in times of tedium. When I worked at Taco Bell this past summer, I'd spend half my time formulating critical essays in my head regarding various titles in my modest library (getting bigger, by the time I own my own home, I plan to have so many that I will need a study with bookshelves for walls to house them).
Recently I've started using Litestep and Windowblinds, as well as modding the UI in WoW, and fiddling w/ Firefox/Thunderbird themes. I've developed a real interest in adding functionality and aesthetics to those kinds of things. It's important to have good hobbies.
Battle.net
Although I've not been putting in enough study time even though I have had bundles of free time, so any cheering on (or jeering on) to get my arse into gear would be very welcome.
iTunes U has some of the same content in MP3 format.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Textbooks are great too, but don't dismiss the novel as an information source, particuarly on history and what other places and cultures/subcultures are like. I pick up reams of trivia from stories too.
I tried iTunes' free lecture tapes, but I'm pretty crap at concentrating on audio-only input and I wind up zoning out and missing huge swaths of it. YMMV though.
These days, as I'm job-hunting, this practical value consists of anything that can give me an edge over other job applicants.
Once I figure out where I want to live after graduation, find a job and settle down (or not) somewhere, in other words once my life gets stable, I feel like only then I can afford the luxury of educating myself in other areas that are not of immediate concern to me.
thought provocative
It's so thought provocative I don't even get it.
Bloggingheads.tv (particularly science Saturday!)
Also, I read (almost) nothing but nonfiction, mostly having to do with globalization and international relations. But not so much in China.
Just about the coolest damn thing ever, MIT puts up online copies of everything related to a broad range of classes. Whatever you academic interests, the odds are good there's something there you'd like.
I've been spending some time browsing, and once my apps for next year are in I'd like to grab a couple classes that fill in holes in my undergrad education and work through them.
I read as much as I can (not very, unfortunately - work is a beast this time of year and I'm too drained when I get home to focus on simple text), and I'm in the process of teaching myself a language from a pair of CDs and a book. I've also purchased cheap math textbooks at used bookstores to keep my skills from atrophying.
The most obvious thing that I've learned is that I'm lazy as hell and as much as I want to keep educating myself, it's still a chore a lot of the time.
Edit: I've also been saving a lot of money lately, and I've been seriously debating with myself whether or not to buy a marimba and regain my musical abilities. It's a tremendous purchase though.
I tend to go on learning spurts. Something comes to my mind (either a totally new topic, or more usually something I'm already interested in) and I feel the need to go on a learning binge about that topic. Right now I'm teaching myself stuff about cryptography, and stuff related to anonymity/privacy online.
I often think about buying text books and just reading them, but I never really get around to it, I guess I'm fairly lazy and not too focused either.
I tip my hat to you sir. When I was a kid my mom offered to get me lessons on playing the piano. In my childish ignorance I said something to the effect that the piano is for losers and gay kids.
I've never regretted anything more in my entire life. To this day I wish I could play the piano well.
Shogun Streams Vidya
I took piano from Kindergarten to 12th grade, but because for all but about 3 of those years (spread out, not at once) I was a lazy little bastard who only wanted to play video games or read I'm like 20% as good as I ought to be from studying that long.
Listen to NPR. Catch Morning Edition and All Things Considered if you can. Then fill in the extra spaces with Weekend Edition, Fresh Air, and WaitWait! Don't Tell Me!
Oh, and PBS has just about every episode of Frontline on their website.
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guh... I hate not having a local NPR that doesn't suck scrotum. You can listen to there live stream though, and that's kinda cool. They also have an archive, though I wish they'd transcribe the damn thing.
I'm not sure but I think they don't have car talk on the online thing. I've never heard it anyway. It might cost money or something. Some people might say that is a good thing, I'm not one of them.
The BBC is great. Between world service and radio 1... well, it's a shame they don't get money from me.
One kinda bad thing, I guess, about self education is that it lets you choose what you study, which can lead to a less than complete understanding of a great many things. Can lead to a very narrow understanding of things, and the world view to go along with that.
As ridiculous as it sounds, Batman/Batman is the perfect example of self improvement. Removing the whole superhero/gadget aspect, there's really no reason that one can't use that as a basis for defining a set of wide-ranging self-improvement goals for personal achievement and furthering yourself.