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What I Learned In College

blackhole12.blogspot.com

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Re: What I Learned In College

#41

Post by Crake »

zanny wrote: post #27
adamnemecek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I learned that the fastest way I'll ever learn a subject (whether or not it's a programming language, a financial derivative, or an era of Hinduism) is on my own, poring over search engines and worn-down books. Professors will never teach me faster than I can teach myself. I've had the same experience. And I hate how colleges seem not to recognize that.

They do (usually). You can even get credit for it, at least in the US, it called CLEP - https://clep.collegeboard.org/ . Cheapest year of college I ever had - was around $200. I skipped an entire years worth of useless general ed courses to get my "requirements" to graduate out of the way at my college on 6 CLEP tests. I think the notes I took for those tests reading the wikibooks and wikipedia articles on the variou…

A lot of colleges won't allow you to CLEP out of things anymore, sadly. :( There's too much money to be made off of you.

Re: What I Learned In College

#42

Post by unimpressive »

Ixiaus wrote: post #22
jmduke wrote: post #15

I graduated two months ago, and I learned a lot of things, too. I learned that the fastest way I'll ever learn a subject (whether or not it's a programming language, a financial derivative, or an era of Hinduism) is on my own, poring over search engines and worn-down books. Professors will never teach me faster than I can teach myself. I learned that, yes, you're more or less paying for the piece of paper (but that d…

A few things formal institution graduates don't realize: When you say "you're more or less paying for the piece of paper" you're taking it for granted (unless you went to a shitty school). As an Autodidact in Mathematics, programming, compsci, and psychology with nothing but a GED; you underestimate the value of rigorous environments. Learning fast is also not the point. Learning thoroughly is the point. Thorough and…

Autodidactism is hard in part because you don't get access to the huge repositories of journal articles and scholarly materials that are included in the cost of your college education. I guess that counts as "facilities" but when I hear that word I think equipment.

Re: What I Learned In College

#43

Post by unimpressive »

dizzystar wrote: post #25
Ixiaus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few things formal institution graduates don't realize: When you say "you're more or less paying for the piece of paper" you're taking it for granted (unless you went to a shitty school). As an Autodidact in Mathematics, programming, compsci, and psychology with nothing but a GED; you underestimate the value of rigorous environments. Learning fast is also not the point. Learning thoroughly is the point. Thorough and…

Couldn't have said it better myself, as an autodidact of CS, math, and music, this is my thoughts. Managing your own time and learning curve is really hard. As an autodidact, I can just not do it because I am tired, busy, not in the mood, or whatever. The second thing that college grads don't get the value of is that they are able to learn by some proven path. This path is not etched out so well and requires consider…

>You also live a lonely life and there is no one you can call up who is also struggling or trade information with.

Is there some sort of network for people on the outside of the university system? A mailing list or something?

Re: What I Learned In College

#44

Post by ericabiz »

jmduke wrote: post #24
Ixiaus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few things formal institution graduates don't realize: When you say "you're more or less paying for the piece of paper" you're taking it for granted (unless you went to a shitty school). As an Autodidact in Mathematics, programming, compsci, and psychology with nothing but a GED; you underestimate the value of rigorous environments. Learning fast is also not the point. Learning thoroughly is the point. Thorough and…

I completely agree with everything you said, particularly the difference between learning quickly and learning thoroughly. I'd love to hear more about your autodidacism. Do you mind explaining your learning process a bit more?

I'm not Ixiaus but I am his best friend and co-founder (and totally going to give him hell in the office tomorrow for posting on HN when he's supposed to be on vacation. ;)

Anyway, he gets up at 6AM every day and runs through a spaced repetition routine. He's written about his process here: http://ixmat.us/articles/2012-12-01_usable-org-drill.html

Re: What I Learned In College

#45

Post by [deleted] »

mjmahone17 wrote: post #20

Holy crap, UW's CS only has 200 graduates per year? For a school of that size, that's tiny. That's close to as many as most Ivy League schools these days, and their undergrad population is usually around 1/5 that of UW. This is especially sad, as CS courses should be pretty easy to scale, especially when you have a group of undergrads who want to teach. Not to mention how hypercompetitiveness drives out diversity, es…

[deleted]

Re: What I Learned In College

#46

Post by Ixiaus »

unimpressive wrote: post #43
dizzystar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't have said it better myself, as an autodidact of CS, math, and music, this is my thoughts. Managing your own time and learning curve is really hard. As an autodidact, I can just not do it because I am tired, busy, not in the mood, or whatever. The second thing that college grads don't get the value of is that they are able to learn by some proven path. This path is not etched out so well and requires consider…

>You also live a lonely life and there is no one you can call up who is also struggling or trade information with. Is there some sort of network for people on the outside of the university system? A mailing list or something?

Hacker News. Khan academy discussions. That's about it for what I've been able to find though.

Re: What I Learned In College

#47

Post by Ixiaus »

jmduke wrote: post #24
Ixiaus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few things formal institution graduates don't realize: When you say "you're more or less paying for the piece of paper" you're taking it for granted (unless you went to a shitty school). As an Autodidact in Mathematics, programming, compsci, and psychology with nothing but a GED; you underestimate the value of rigorous environments. Learning fast is also not the point. Learning thoroughly is the point. Thorough and…

I completely agree with everything you said, particularly the difference between learning quickly and learning thoroughly. I'd love to hear more about your autodidacism. Do you mind explaining your learning process a bit more?

I'll write a blog post about it. It also includes a a designed curriculum, strict reading schedule, discipline in doing exercises, creativity in self evaluation, self awareness of strengths and weaknesses and tailoring the curriculum to them. I have a twenty page writing piece on my processes and philosophy that I will finalize. It appears there is a desire for it and I would love to interact with others sharing my journey!

Send me a message at my email in my profile!

Re: What I Learned In College

#49

Post by jacques_chester »

mjmahone17 wrote: post #20

Holy crap, UW's CS only has 200 graduates per year? For a school of that size, that's tiny. That's close to as many as most Ivy League schools these days, and their undergrad population is usually around 1/5 that of UW. This is especially sad, as CS courses should be pretty easy to scale, especially when you have a group of undergrads who want to teach. Not to mention how hypercompetitiveness drives out diversity, es…

Most CS departments are small, because the 101 courses usually have enormous dropout rates. People come in thinking: I'll write apps. I'll write computer games. I'll be like the cool hackers in the movies. I'll be a billionaire.

About halfway through their first cryptic gcc error message, these students discover that their burning passion is really for Arts or Business or whathaveyou.

Re: What I Learned In College

#50

Post by blackhole »

navait wrote: post #7

Sigh. Another special snowflake lamenting that the system didn't bend to exactly his needs. What you get out of university is what you put into it. Want to be judged for something other than test taking? Get involved in research. Get involved in one of the many math and CS organizations your campus has. But you have to go get them yourself. Nobody's going to say "oh, you're so smart, please join our team!" Get it out…

Several people seem to get this theme out of the essay, which I think is partially due to the sarcastic tone I take in certain sections. I try to make it blatantly obvious that I disapprove of the system in general and think it's a disaster to everyone, not just me.

To be perfectly honest, the system was fairly kind to me. I was able to deal with it. My little brother couldn't handle it and had to go to a special online high school and get tutoring help just to graduate. He is very bright, but the system just crushes him because he can't operate within it very well and the system doesn't care.

I did once try to get into research. Academic research has a whole boatload of its own problems, including the professor/graduate student ponzi scheme and the overemphasis on getting published. I decided doing research on my own would be much more fruitful.

My classmates were usually quite smart. They were also usually just as frustrated with the system as I was.

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