Gerald’s Comments (group member since Jul 28, 2011)

Gerald’s comments from the Autodidacts group.

Issac wrote: "Hey guys I have been inactive a while but now I am serious again about reading. My goal is 50 books for the year which far surpasses my usual 10 or so books a year, but at the same time seems prett..."

Do you keep a reading journal? I find it helpful to keep a dedicated notebook to jot down notes and references while I'm reading. As far as keeping track of explicit references to earlier works, that could help. Also, if I'm reading something that's fairly well-known, I like checking out the wikipedia article because usually it will point to the roots behind it.

When I'm approaching a new subject, it can be difficult to search for the right books to get started. Tell us what you want to study and why, and we'll try to respond by recommending books that we think will be helpful. And if someone is wanting to study something that you know about, help them out!

Helen wrote: "Hi guys, I discovered Goodreads earlier this week, and today I discovered this group.

It was interesting to read your introduction posts, you all have different paths to autodidactism, and the..."

That's great that you took your education into your own hands. I remember being taught ancient history in school, but it didn't interest me at the time so i paid little attention. Now that I have some real questions about why our civilization is the way it is, I actually want to learn it.

Also, I find boredom to be a good indicator. It's good to pay attention to boredom without feeling guilty. Welcome to the group.

Issac wrote: "Hi guys, I am happy to catch this group early in its creation. I would not call myself much of an autodidact but I would like to start being one. I have recently left a PhD program (I have my maste..."

Welcome to the group, Isaac. I remember graduating from college when I was 24 or so (I was an art major) and looking forward to having time to study. I started reading a really big book of post-modernist theory, but didn't get far. All this time I was kicking myself for not continuing my education -- until I started "designing" courses and thinking more about how to do it. I realize that I actually did continue it, just not in a schoolish way. The lesson for me is that curiosity will be your guide if you let it, and "should's" are poison to curiosity.

Thanks for joining!

Will wrote: "Gerald, you are one well rounded son of a gun. I guess I am as well. I've long been a fan of assisted, mentored, or "taught" education -- the traditional brand of education -- but I also espouse se..."

Sometimes I think of science as an attempt at constructing a universal narrative. Since we went from tribes of 150 people to a more globalized culture, we gradually lost the tradition of oral storytelling. 40,000 years ago, people were not longing for facts and settling for myths. Pre-civilized people were just fine without knowing the facts of basic science because their world demanded of them only their nature.

More important is that which brings peace and understanding than that which can be logically proven.

I'll introduce myself and the group, and allow new members to do the same. This is the first Goodreads group I've started, so it's new to me.

I read No More Prisons by William Upski Wimsatt after I graduated from college, and I was inspired by the idea of self-education. Eight years later (December 2011) I decided to take the idea seriously.

In those eight years, I taught myself how to start a business, how to design websites using HTML, PHP and CSS (I can now design functional websites by writing code), how to use MySQL databases, and how to customize Wordpress. I've designed guitars, figured out basic electronics, learned how to read schematics, I've designed and built furniture, I can tech a club show and engineer a recording session. I could even prepare a bankruptcy case if I needed to. I've done all of these things because I had specific goals I wanted to accomplish, and I needed to learn a few things in order to get them done myself. I've often kicked myself for doing things the hard way. I used to stay up all night scouring the Internet for pieces of code, thinking “this wouldn't take so long if I could afford to pay someone else to design it for me.”

After going through phases of being a visual artist, self-publisher, organizer, recording artist, sound tech and live performer, I realized that one of my real skills is acquiring knowledge on my own. Even when I was in college, I studied avant-garde art movements in my spare time, which culminated in my friends and I organizing our own group.

Right now, I'm involved in a long, slow research project involving human nature and the psychological and ecological conflicts of civilization. As a result I'm studying Buddhist philosophy, Western Religion, anthropology, psychology and economics. I'm throwing in mathematics to challenge my brain and the subjects of lifestyle minimalism and personal finance so I can balance and manage my life.

People who take charge of their own self-directed learning don't necessarily need to do it in isolation. In my mind, that's the hard part of the autodidact's project. There's a social, community aspect to learning that gets lost after you turn 25. Taking charge of your lifelong education means taking charge of that as well. I hope others will feel like joining the conversation.