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I find mathematics interesting, and I'll watch educational videos about it on YouTube and occasionally read some stuff, and I COULD take various free online cou
by lkbm 10y ago
I find mathematics interesting, and I'll watch educational videos about it on YouTube and occasionally read some stuff, and I COULD take various free online courses and/or tutorials, and yet despite all this, I'm don't seem to be advancing as much as I did in college when I had to spend three hours a week in a lecture and several times that working problems.
Because having the option to take a course teaches me nothing in itself, and the occasional interesting, non-intensive video doesn't begin to compete with semi-mandatory hours of instruction and practice every week.
A few people will learn a lot without taking a class, but far fewer people have the motivation and drive to do that than have the intelligence and drive to benefit greatly from a class.
- yummyfajitas 10y agoRealistically, if you don't have the motivation and drive to study science all by yourself, you don't have the motivation and drive to be a scientist. A scientist doesn't learn everything they need in classes and then stop. They need to continually improve their knowledge; when I had an academic career I spent perhaps 4 hours/day going through papers and keeping up with the literature. Nowadays that's probably dropped to 2 hours/day, since I'm in a space where old school techniques (operations research FTW!) are generally pretty effective.