A Few Things I’ve Learned About Learning
In May 2020, I launched this little Medium publication to ask questions.
At the time, I’d had the possibility of graduate school in the back of my mind for years… but I knew so little about academia that I didn’t know where to begin learning what I would need to know in order to make an informed choice about a master’s degree. So I did something that still shocks the planner in me to this day:
I just started writing.
I wrote down a list of 70+ questions about academia and graduate school off the top of my head, started an overwhelming amount of drafts in Evernote, and began sharing my questions as posts here in no particular order. Simultaneously, I started taking courses from various sources in a variety of subjects, followed as many academics as possible on Twitter, listened to podcasts, watched documentaries, read blogs, read books, and generally tried to let my brain be a sponge.
Needless to say, it was a mess.
But it was also effective.
Learning Something You Know Nothing About Is Messy… So Make a Mess
(You can clean it up later.)
I love the logistics portion of learning projects. Deciding on the most effective and efficient ways to learn something, including what sources to use and where to access them, is my favorite. For lack of a better term, we’ll call it syllabus-building. I love syllabus-building so much, in fact, that I can do it for months without actually learning anything at all.
But deep down, even I know that brilliant strategy is completely useless if it is never executed.
While an efficient, strategic approach is something to be valued at some point in a learning project, if you know nothing at all about what you want to learn, then it is too early to be worried about efficiency.
Or “wasting” time.
Or “failing”.
Our brains can draw connections, compare and contrast sources, and layer information from multiple mediums… but our brains can’t do any of those things if we don’t give them any information to sort through.
Diving in is essential, especially early on.
In 2020, I took a course in Statistics for Data Science through a tech bootcamp, where I had my first exposure to Python. I also took most of a course in Philosophy on Coursera, which I’m planning to finish in the first quarter of 2021. I had to stop work on that course because I enrolled in an online Calculus 2 course in the fall semester after I learned more about the math prerequisites required for a graduate degree in economics.
Am I ready to go to graduate school in any of these subjects at this point? Absolutely not.
Do I know enough to make a more informed choice about what I want to study next in the fields of data science, philosophy, and math? Absolutely.
Stumbling Through Things is an Excellent Way to Learn
Outside of formal courses, I spent 2020 literally stumbling through information. I was constantly hearing and reading terms, abbreviations, and jargon on podcasts and on blogs that I wasn’t familiar with… so I looked it up as I went. I found a variety of books, blogs, videos, podcasts, and other learning resources in 2020 because I saw them mentioned on Twitter or heard someone mention them in an interview. I made lists upon lists of material to come back to later.
I also ask search engines a ton of questions. Occasionally I find gold, like the fact that there is an entire field of research dedicated to the question what is the right question. (The field is called global priorities research, and along with effective altruism, it is one of the most interesting things I discovered in 2020.) Sometimes the search engines fail me, so I write about what I’m looking for here on Medium and hope for the best. (Right now, I’m looking for a post about why philosophy seems to look down on ethics… I keep coming across this casual derision, but I can’t find anything online when I search why do philosophers think that applying philosophy to the real world makes it less prestigious. Please help.)
This passive, stumbling-style learning is difficult to quantify in something like this post. All I can say is that by the end of 2020, I wasn’t running into nearly as much academic jargon that I didn’t know. When academics discuss job prospects, the academic job market, or the general trajectory of an academic’s career path, I can now follow what they are talking about. I didn’t pick up any books that explained these things to me in 2020, I just stumbled through a lot of content in a variety of mediums that went over my head.
Until one day, I realized that significantly less of the discussion was going over my head.
The “Wrong” Experience Is Almost Always Better Than No Experience
Obviously, the argument to just jump in and start doing things doesn’t work in particularly high-stakes or high-risk scenarios. But if you want to learn something or generally get smarter, doing something is better than doing nothing. You may start off listening to a podcast, then realize it isn’t adding much value. You may follow some content creators, and use them to find others you want to follow. You may pick up a book, then determine that particular niche or field isn’t for you.
All of that experience is useful. Even if you are figuring out what you don’t want to be doing, that is significantly more knowledge than you are gaining by not doing anything at all. You’re also gaining a wealth of “intangible” information as you go.
“Intangible” Lessons May Be The Most Important
Aside from gaining some foundational knowledge in a few fields through courses and stumble-learning last year, I also learned a lot about learning and my learning style in particular…. including the fact that I may be an academic rebel.
I’m not sure if I’ll ultimately be able to squeeze myself into an academic box. I’m also not sure if writing about the fact that I think there might be a better way to do some things will preclude me from ever getting accepted into a graduate program.
I hope not, but I guess we’ll find out.
Until then…
The Learning Continues
At this point, I still feel like I don’t know much about graduate school or academia… but I know a lot more about how much I don’t know than I did when I started this learning project.
We’ll call it progress.
I’m excited to continue this learning project with a slightly more organized syllabus in 2021. As soon as that is complete, I’ll share it here on The Aspiring Academic.
Resources
A few resources I learned from in 2020, in no particular order:
Coursera Philosophy Course
Indiana University Math Courses Online
A Few Podcasts:
A Few Documentaries on Education:
A Few Books:
- Ultralearning (my response)
- Poor Economics (my response)
A Great Place to find more books: LSE’s MSc course pages (A majority of the courses show reading lists or indicative reading: very helpful for syllabus-building)
The 80,000 Hours site (research and advice on the big question: what to focus on in your life in order to do the most good)
