“Autodidacticism or self-education is the act of teaching oneself about a subject in which one has had little or no formal education.”
Many years ago when I was first starting out riding BMX freestyle, I was down at Bicycle World in Howell, NJ, just hanging out riding in the front of their lot in between some shows that were going on there. As I was apt to do back then I was busting out some tricks I was working on at the time to pass the minutes between the team’s shows. While I was doing that, one of the other people who were there wandered over to me to strike up a conversation and one of their questions was “who taught you how to do that?”. Me, without really thinking about it, said “Oh I learned it myself, I just pick up what I can and practice to figure things out”.
Although I always got good grades in school and had no issues with passing tests and all that, just regurgitating what someone was telling me never felt quite “good enough”. I wanted to know what else was out there. After High School, while everyone else was going off to college, I decided instead to go off and learn “on my own”. In the years to come I had a few different jobs from being an assistant to a construction site supervisor to being a mason and then a bike shop manager and ramp park designer – manager. All the while I just kept up one thing. That one thing was pursuing knowledge.
Too often in life people get stuck in the rut of not advancing what they can do or know and settle into what they have always been doing. Many will seek out more education but they won’t really sit back and go, “I am going to learn this without being forced to or having it fed to me”.
Myself, I would always pursue venues that people had not gone into before and look to see what I could do to learn new things. Either from the activity itself or the experience of doing it. The biggest motivator for this was my BMX bike. Those years of just doing my own thing made me realize that the best thing you can do in your, is to pursue knowledge on your own. That way you learn what YOU want when YOU want. It also has a tendency to stick better in the grey matter.
It wasn’t till a few years ago that I learned this is called being autodidactic. It’s done me a lot of good in life and gotten me into places I never would had if I followed the “have someone teach you” path. Through this I’ve been able to tour the country, excel in computers, networking, graphic arts, videography, photography, literature, periodical making, and even house building. Learning something new on your own is just as much a thrill as climbing Everest…and less dangerous, LOL Enough banter, let me go learn about home automation…
Have fun, learn sumtin’ son!
(shite I’ve worked on over the years that I wasn’t taught how to do…)
