How to Learn Without a Teacher
In most learning environments, there is a teacher/instructor/mentor. Well what if there isn’t? How do you learn without a teacher? As a homeschooled kid, I do a lot of self teaching, or at least further researching. In this article I’ll tell you how to not only teach yourself but hopefully how to make it more entertaining and enjoyable. Keep in mind that not all of these things that I will mention will work for everyone.
Researching further: When you’re watching a tutorial, or reading a book and have a question that the author doesn’t go over, what do you do? Google it! Knowing what to type into the search bar and how to manipulate the computer to giving you the exact answer you want is a skill. One thing to be careful of is using outdated resources. In the programming world, the different languages are always changing, modernizing and adapting to the latest updates. A trick for this is using the search tools and setting how far back you want to search for something:
Another tip for researching is to use more than one resource. Especially if the topic is confusing. Hearing something explained from more than one perspective is very helpful.
Remembering the hard stuff: When you’re learning something particularly confusing and are having a hard time remembering everything that was said in that 6 hour long tutorial you watched or that 200 page technical book you read, something that will always help is to take notes. If you follow the link that is attached to that sentence, you can read exactly how taking notes by hand helps you remember things and the statistics of kids that took hand-written notes vs. the kids who took notes on a computer and which set passed the test and remembered the material more often.
When I was in high school Chemistry, I had to memorize parts of the periodic table, my goofy mom would help me come up with silly songs for each section of the table. I rolled my eyes at the time, but when the test came, I would hum the song to myself and ace it! Whatever method helps you remember, is good. This leads me to my next point:
Asking for help. This tip is not always fun or great for the ego, but keep your eye on the prize. What would you do if the tutorial was super confusing and the googling got you nowhere? Find someone who can help you, whether that be via Twitter, opening your own stack overflow questions, or calling a fellow programmer. Yet another thing my mom has taught me is something called Rubber Duck Debugging. Basically you keep a Rubber Duck on your desk and explain the problem to the duck, sometimes during this process you realize the problem and can fix it yourself!
How to keep focused: Teaching yourself something is not always going to be easy. Sometimes you will want to pull your hair out or throw your computer or textbook across the room and although in the long run teaching yourself a skill is very impressive, while you’re sitting there at two o’clock in the morning with cold coffee and a fried brain, it’ll be kind of hard to recall why you wanted to take on more. There are a couple ways to help yourself remember. First of all, work on something you’re passionate about. If you love what you’re doing, each little success will be inspiring. You will want to spend your free time on it and you won’t give up when it becomes more complex. Second, use the Pomodoro Technique or something like it. Pace yourself when it comes to cramming complicated information into your brain.
BE STUBBORN: If I can relay one single thing to you in this article, the most important tip I can give you is to be tenacious. Do not give up. If you’re going to succeed in teaching yourself anything, you will need to be stubborn and keep your eye on the prize.
Thanks! -Sam
