Have the Audacity to be an Autodidact

I wasn’t a great student in high school.  In fact, I wasn’t even a good student.  It really had nothing to do with my ability.  I just didn’t show up.  It should be noted that my high school was no different than many today that teach, mostly, from a curriculum created decades ago.  When I did attend classes, I was somewhere between an A and B student, without really trying.  It was just too boring.

Because we didn’t spend much time in school my friends and I did get into some mischief.  I guess you can say that the importance of a quality education was lost on us.  The environment we were raised in may have had an impact on our feelings about school.  More than anything, the schools we attended didn’t really fall into the category of quality education, at least not for us.  Being a home schooling advocate, as well as a student of organizational psychology, I tend to believe many schools don’t make a good enough effort to be a fit for all students.  I also believe that school culture includes teachers, students, administrators and even board members, and that they all play a part in the success or failure of every single student.  I don't just believe they can influence the potential for success in school, but also success in life.

I chose to write for teens and young adults because I never forgot how it felt to be that age, to be curious about life.  Yet with school being, for the most part, ill-equipped to keep a kid like me really interested, sometimes I wonder what it would have been like for my friends and me if the internet came along when we were teenagers.  With all the resources it has, I’d like to believe it would have had a positive effect on us. We didn’t go to school, like we should have, but most of us read and had strong opinions.  You can say that we were a bunch of budding autodidacts, and that maybe we were just a little ahead of our time.   An autodidact is someone who's self-taught. They want to learn, not because somebody comes along and says, “this is what you need to know.”  Autodidacts don’t, necessarily, pursue knowledge because they have to.  They're the opposite of passive learners.

It’s been okay to be a passive learner for a long time.  Since the internet took hold, we’ve been in a knowledge economy that has shifted everything and is putting a squeeze on passive learners.  Everybody is expected to be up to speed on most things.  More and more, they’re expected to find most of the knowledge they need on their own.  Now, you have to know, not just about issues of general conversation like politics and business (or sometimes even celebrity gossip) but especially anything having to do with your career.  Because there’s so much information out there, more people will assume you’re up to speed.  Some of those people may be less important, in the scheme of things, and others might be crucial to your career, education, and even your finances.

Of course, being an autodidact makes you a better student because you're always building on your stored knowledge.  As an autodidact, you don’t have anyone telling you how to process what you’re thinking, mainly because you’re getting information from a variety of sources and not just school. You have the freedom of taking in that information, figuring out how it all makes sense, and from there you’re able to go on to look at the bigger picture.  Most autodidacts, eventually, grow to become critical thinkers and that's a good thing.  Your path to success, however you choose to define it may, likely, be different from that of someone having the privilege of access to an elite education, or other solid resources, from the start.  Like millions of other people, the internet was a game changer for me.  I suppose, had I been more willing to conform to what people expected of me, at best; I would have ended up limited to teaching in a certain style, using a one-dimensional curriculum. I might not be able to tell my story, and to share knowledge, in such a diverse way and so freely.  I wouldn’t have unlimited opportunity, as I do today, to reach people all over the world with my ideas.

Thanks to the internet we can all, pretty much, learn almost anything for free.  If you’re leery, or downright afraid, of student-loan debt, then it’s time to think for yourself, and have the audacity to be an autodidact.  Realistically, you can work for less, and live on less, if you don’t have student loan debt hanging over your head.  To help you start, there’s a list of massive open online courses (MOOC’s) at mooc-list.com. You can find free online courses offered by well-known universities at oedb.org (Open Education Database).  Oedb.org can also help with school ranking statistics, identifying the best college fit for your interests, and give advice about transferring credits you’ve already earned.  There are also other providers, like Udemy and edX, that offer courses for free, or for much less than you’d pay at college.  Or you can just pick a college, and see if they offer free lectures on YouTube.  Coursera was started by a group of Stanford professors and it offers free online courses at Ivy League schools.  You can even get direct access to groups online if you want to talk about what you’re learning.  There are study note sharing websites such as Open Study (Brainly), Course Hero and Chegg.  You can download any of their apps to your device.

The audacity of the autodidact, definitely, works for the entrepreneur spirit.  You no longer need to spend hours in a classroom learning how to start and run a successful business.  You can build your business day-by-day, watching video-by-video online.Of course, for some jobs and careers you might need formal training, or a degree, but mind your rear view mirror.  Technology is moving up so fast behind you that the same job or career you may be banking a lifetime of student debt on might not even exist by the time you graduate. Things are changing that fast.  It seems everyone needs to get on the autodidact bandwagon.  Parents need to get their kids on it now.  Yes, its fine if parents choose not to home school, but not training children to be autodidactic from this point on could, likely, cause them to be left behind.  Either way, I’ve always believed that public school education, especially, needs to be subsidized at home by parents.  Come on, we have to take some responsibility about how and what our children learn and, more importantly how they think.

Education, for most people, means someone is telling you what to think.  You’re encouraged to color inside the lines and not go beyond the scope of the instructor.  An autodidact enjoys the challenge of stretching beyond a narrow scope.  Of course, education is okay.  Believe me, I know it can be really nice to have a degree or two hanging on the wall.  For all the time I've gone to college, I never felt I was paying to be taught as much as it was an opportunity to be in the company of people, who were somewhat like-minded and wanted to talk about ideas.  Now, of course, I have an option to do the same without adding onto the student loan debt.

The best part about being an autodidact is feeling confident that no one can dictate what I’ll contribute to the world.  I control how much I can grow.  If you don’t feel appreciated professionally, you have access to enough knowledge to build an enterprise.  You can, in fact, shape your own destiny.  Have the audacity to turn down spoon-fed information.  Have the audacity to prove them wrong when anyone tries to tell you that your potential is limited, for whatever reason.  Now, if you’re behind on anything you honestly have no one to blame but yourself.  It’s on you. The information is there at your fingertips. So, take hold of the future now.

© 2018 Diane Coleman. No part of this work, written by the author, may be reproduced, reposted for any website, or print publication, without prior permission.

Looking for Love: How to Avoid Relationships that Might Mess up Your Life and Decisions Are Destiny: Short Lessons on Decision Making and Life Wisdom for Teens and Young Adults are both available now on Amazon Kindle.