A Short Guide to Self-Education

As we start a new year, we often ask ourselves, ‘How would I like to be different?’ In particular, many of us go back to our university classes wondering how our courses on abstract Quantum Mechanics or the poetry of Cicero are going to translate into real career prospects. Through this lens, many upcoming graduates or current students might find motivation in pursuing skills-based learning outside of their regular university classes. There is more to learning outside of university, however, than what initially meets the eye. By the end of this, you’ll have more great reasons to self-educate, some strategies on how to learn better, along with some resources to start this exciting journey!

Why Self-Educate?

Learning how to teach yourself skills and ideas is one of the most important gifts you can give yourself as a person. As a university student, this might seem silly given our reliance on professors inundating us with content. However, much of this guidance diminishes in the real world. In the real world, you do not spend most of your days learning; most of it is actually doing stuff, and more often than not, you will not know how to do the stuff you have to do.

Projects at work will often involve clients from all different backgrounds, expertise, and contexts that were most likely not taught to you in a class. It follows that successful people are constantly learning at work; your success in whatever job you take really depends on you not stopping developing new skills, especially after you cross the stage of Convocation Hall at graduation.

Consider this: if you find your job unfulfilling or seek a change due to various reasons such as dissatisfaction or pay, soft skills may transition well across professions, but unfortunately hard skills often do not. Being able to educate yourself allows you to be nimble and flexible with the changing economics of different professions, without, perhaps, needing to go to university again and getting another bachelor’s degree. Another, more subtle benefit is just the new perspectives you can absorb from different thinkers. Not to mention, it can make you sound very intelligent and sophisticated at social gatherings.

Women in Engineering x AMD Event on October 25th, 2023

High School vs. University and Becoming Detached from Being Taught

We all remember (or perhaps want to forget) high school. Our experiences across classes were likely very different: some classes were fantastic, enriching experiences where we learned a ton; others… er, not so much. However, the one common thing between them all was that there was a teacher at the front of the room, teaching you whatever content your country/state/province/etc.’s mandatory curriculum was. You had to stay in class, listen to the teacher for however long it was, even if you understood the material, and then show up to be tested on it sometime in the future.

In university, yes, there was still a professor at the front of the classroom, but the crucial difference was you didn’t need to attend class if having someone talk at you didn’t fit your ideal way of learning; you just needed to understand the material enough to do well on assessments. In challenging classes particularly, you may have even had to learn from just the given textbook, the internet, or your classmate(s) to understand the material for the assessment. In university, whether it was quantum thermodynamics or the philosophy of Descartes, it means that in one way or another you have taught yourself something already; this is not something you had likely done in high school.

Now comes the most valuable insight from our journey so far. If you have already taught yourself, what stops you from learning whatever you want given the tools that work for you? You may have studied Neuroscience in your classes, but that doesn’t mean you must only like brain tissue diagrams and hormone pathways for the rest of your career! You are allowed to change interests. Beyond the content you learn, your skill in teaching yourself things is the most important skill you get out of going to university and a hard one to acquire at that! This skill is the differentiating thing you can leverage to your advantage in your career.

Learning How to Learn

With this realization in hand, you might want to jump into an online course to teach yourself something right away but may be confused about where to start. Perhaps you did teach yourself out of the thermodynamics textbook for that midterm but were still confused. Wherever you are on your journey of learning how to learn, it’s always helpful to refresh yourself on the basics. But first, a story.

Barbara Oakley was done with math. A self-confessed ‘math-phobe,’ she flunked her way through her algebra courses (failing twice!) and vowed to never touch technical subjects again after finishing high school. At eighteen, she enlisted in the US army to pay for a BA degree in Russian; eventually, though, she transferred to a Lieutenant position in the Signal Corps, which meant lots of technical electronics training! Flunking her way through that as well, she saw her other colleagues with technical training and recognized the benefits of understanding the sophisticated technology they were using. Reflecting on the path of her career so far, she realized that she’d pigeonholed herself. But what if she did the unthinkable and tried to retrain herself? So, at age 26, she found herself in the last place she’d thought she’d be seven years prior — in remedial trigonometry! It was tough at first, but she eventually found tricks to learn the technical material, conquering the tough technical subjects that once eluded her, eventually getting a degree in electrical engineering. As she improved, she realized she wanted to learn more about it, eventually attaining a master’s and PhD in engineering as well. Now a Professor of Systems Engineering at Oakland State University, she has written several books on self-learning to help others who were in similar shoes as her when she started studying engineering.

Throughout her studies, Dr. Oakley came up with strategies and tricks that helped her master the complicated material she faced in her engineering degree. She goes over many of them in her book ‘A Mind For Numbers,’ but here are the four most important, which you can use to help make your self-learning more effective.

1. Notice your DIFFUSE and FOCUSED Thinking

The brain’s activity can be separated into two main states. Focused thinking is when the brain is in a concentrated and deliberative state. Working out an argument for an essay, solving a problem set, or summarizing a complex reading are all examples of this. Here, your brain is all about absorbing information. Diffuse Thinking is when your brain is at rest and not focused. In this state, consolidation of knowledge, connections between ideas, and unexpected insights can really occur. Oakley compares it to the brain filing away the new knowledge learnt for later use. Noticing these two states can help signal how studying is really going, particularly if you need a break.

2. Take Lots of Breaks!

Given the existence of diffuse and focused thinking, it explains why it is so important to take breaks. Taking time to rest and consolidate your knowledge, even for small amounts of time, can have a great impact on your overall understanding of a concept and how they relate to one another. From her research, Dr. Oakley recommends the Pomodoro Technique, where you set a timer for 25 minutes of focused work, followed by a five-minute break, and repeat.

3. Break your Learning into Chunks

Chunking is the process of creating particular neural patterns in the brain. Those patterns might come in the form of an equation, a phrase in Tagalog, or a guitar chord, among other things. Neuroscience research shows that having a large library of well-practiced knowledge chunks in a certain subject indicates mastery over that topic. In particular, using chunks of knowledge through practice brings fluency in the particular steps needed to do a particular task. Structuring learning around relating different chunks of knowledge builds a deeper understanding of a topic. This is because the simpler chunks link together to form a larger, broader, and better overall comprehension of concepts.

4. Know thyself

The most important thing Dr. Oakley suggests to new self-learners is to objectively recognize that people learn in different ways. Each style of learning has its strengths and weaknesses. Some have ‘racecar brains’ that snap up information. Others have ‘hiker brains’ that take longer to assimilate information, but in the process collect more nuanced details along the way. Understanding how you can optimize your learning based on your brain type will make your learning process a lot easier for you.

When creating your learning strategy, consider how it integrates with your lifestyle. How much time are you willing to commit a week to your learning? Any amount of time is great, but it is important to be honest with yourself about how much you can handle, especially with your other commitments. Prioritization is important both as an undergrad managing your coursework or as an individual employed at a company. Having clear expectations from the start of your trip and adjusting them as you go is a great way to ensure the success of your learning journey. You also needn’t embark on this journey solo. Definitely think about inviting friends to learn with you, both for mutual accountability and to help each other stay motivated to achieve your goals.

Some Places to Learn Besides University

Though you may never grace a university lecture hall again after graduating, there are still tons of places where you can upgrade your skills and learn new ones, both as a current student or as someone in industry (*denotes not just tech-related stuff):

• Coursera*: Fantastic resource, you can learning everything from data science to music production, with LinkedIn certificates, all for free with your U of T email address
• LinkedIn Learning*: Great for learning career-related skills, including soft skills. To get it for free you need to sign up for a Toronto Public Library card (this card is free if you show your UofT student status at a library branch)
• YouTube: 3Blue1Brown, CrashCourse*, etc.: pretty-self-explanatory, we’ve all likely done this before. That said, a comprehensive list of educational YouTubers is provided below.
• The Odin Project: Learn web development, interactively, for free!
• freeCodeCamp: Learn all types of programming, all for free!
• Khan Academy*: Learn anything from Economics to Thermodynamics, for free!
• MIT OpenCourseWare*: Learn from some of the best professors in the world. Actual taped MIT lectures, along with problem sets and past exams to test your knowledge.
• Codecademy: Free courses on basic coding, offer plotted technical skills career paths
• Udemy*: A wide array of coding, language, business, marketing courses available for a variety of prices. Lacks educational vetting, but lots of good courses.

The End

“The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you” — B. B. King, Blues Guitarist & Rock and Roll Hall of Famer

Beyond the tangible career benefits of learning new skills, the best reason to learn is simply to learn for the pure joy of knowing new things. In many ways, learning something new can be more immersive than watching TV or playing a video game and is ultimately more rewarding, personally and professionally, than both of them combined. As many schools have said through their Latin motto: “Abeunt studia in mores” — one’s studies pass into character. Indeed, it is through the pure joy of learning that you can create the best version of yourself, whatever that may be. Happy learning!

Written by Luca Carnegie.

Even More Self-Learning Resources:

• A cool video on “Hiker vs. Racecar Brains”
• Self-Learning Inspiration: Scott Young’s MIT Challenge
• A NYT Article: Barbara Oakley on Learning How to Learn
• A reddit megathread of Educational YouTube channels
• Cal Newport’s Book “How to Become a Straight-A student:”
• Prof. Barbara Oakley’s Famous-ish books, “A Mind for Numbers” and “Learning How to Learn”