A suggestion on learning things outside of classes

[Will]

Once I realized that I should be doing more than school and decided that I should actually learn things, I had trouble figuring out what I should learn and how I should learn it. I recently found an answer.

Classes are quite useful because they provide some social interaction that makes the topic slightly more fun (Isn't it fun to read different books silently with other people? This is called parallel play.) and because the teacher can help but also because they provide some structure.

The structure is very important to the learning. Someone has figured out the logical thing to learn after whatever you know or the logical way to learn whatever you want to learn.

Here is my suggestion:

Get the course catalog from any tertiary school, preferably a paper copy from a school with a strong program in something that interests you or just some top school. The bigger schools are likely to have a wider and deeper selection. They may also have better teachers, which may be important.

Look through it and find interesting classes. Choose one. Optionally, you make sure you have the prerequisites or that the prerequisites aren't really necessary, but you can do this later too. Then look for its book list online. A few ways to do this:

• Search for the class name, number, teacher, &c.
• Check the school's store for a book list.
• Get someone in the school to figure it out for you; it shouldn't be hard for him.
• Email the teacher. University professors are not so stupid as primary and secondary school teachers, so they're likely to understand if you say you were bored and decided to look through the course catalog, find something that interests you and learn it on your own.[/list:u]
  The syllabus could be helpful too. The above methods aside from the school store should work for this too.
  
  Then you just order an old (and thus sanely priced) edition of the textbook. If this is still too expensive, you can order something a with a similar name. One way of finding this is by looking it up in a library and checking for books with the same call number.
  
  Then just read it. Actually, you may want to read the first section of How to Read a Book first. Basically, you shouldn't feel like you need to read it in complete depth, and you don't have to finish the book if you find that you don't really want to. Also you don't want video lectures. Well, I don't at least; they bore me somehow. Books aren't always too interesting either, but videos are somehow not so exciting as I'd expect. Class assignments and tests may be helpful, but I've always found them relatively boring. Also, if you were interested enough to choose this class, you're likely to come up with real-life or more-applied assignments or things that just interest you more.

[Michio-kun]

Are you assuming that someone cannot attend the relevant class?

Agreeably... you can learn anything from a bookstore or library.

The idea about getting a book that a university uses is a good idea in most cases, but I wouldn't recommend relying on just one book.

For example, the book we're using for differential equations is a piece of garbage. I love math and this book is ungodly boring and confusing. The professor even admitted it sucked.

About emailing a professor, they'll have that information at a university website, and also you should ask the professor, "Would you recommend another book?" You might as well email more than one faculty member while you're at it.

[Will]

Michio-kun Wrote:Are you assuming that someone cannot attend the relevant class?

Agreeably... you can learn anything from a bookstore or library.

The idea about getting a book that a university uses is a good idea in most cases, but I wouldn't recommend relying on just one book.

For example, the book we're using for differential equations is a piece of garbage. I love math and this book is ungodly boring and confusing. The professor even admitted it sucked.

About emailing a professor, they'll have that information at a university website, and also you should ask the professor, "Would you recommend another book?" You might as well email more than one faculty member while you're at it.

One nice thing about not taking classes is indeed that you are not discouraged from looking at different books. Also, if you're in a university library, you'll be able to check out loads of old textbooks and maybe even have the new one if the class isn't being taught that semester.

People in high school will have difficulty attending the class. I get the impression that the lectures for the types of classes that end up having lots of non-reading homework aren't so helpful as the ones that don't have much non-reading homework and that they assign such homework because we haven't figured out a better way to teach/learn the subject. Most people don't really end up reading the textbook when they take the class until they're studying for the final exam, at which point some learn everything. This demonstrates that you, too, can learn everything in one night if you feel like it.

Even though I am at university, I can't take all of the classes I want to take, especially the ones that have lots of problem sets as that would be quite stressful and boring. Fortunately, these are also among the best documented classes that follow the textbook most closely. I don't take the class, go to a few lectures maybe, read the textbook, and learn enough that I could easily figure out how to do whatever the class teaches when I need to do it. This ends up taking far less time than 180 hours. And then I'll just skip to the class after the one I learned without taking.

[Will]

And I managed to completely miss your presence on the forums since you've joined, so I read your first post. This reminds me of the interesting situation I'm in that helps in making my method work.

My major is something that one might call "design", so the classes are mostly applied common sense. I'm also the only one in the program who is at all into math, (You don't even have to take math to graduate.) so math is refreshing and even more fun because I don't associate it with painful classes. My school does have pretty good math and engineering programs however, so there are fun activities of the sort and a few people who are interested in them.