PROS AND CONS OF SELF-TEACHING.
self-teaching has to be the one of the most reliable methods to acquire knowledge since the existence of mankind. Most geniuses and great philosophers used it to educate themselves, out of this they made outstanding breakthroughs which changed the world. To be honest many people right now are self-learning in order to get new skills to either get a job or further their career achievements. As a self-teaching software developer, I decided to layout the different advantages and disadvantages I have come across in my journey.
ADVANTAGES
Self-teaching comes with many advantages, the following are some of them:
· Learning at your own pace and deciding your own schedule.
As a student I have a chance to choose a specific time which I’ll learn, this has been really great especially when I have a tight schedule like going to work or doing other important things. I don’t get worried about being behind the syllabus or anything school calendar related. I learn at my own pace depending on the difficulty of the chapter, since am the learner and teacher I figure out my weaknesses on a certain area and I decide the amount of time I’ll spend on it until I get it.
· It’s cheap….
I found it absurd that people pay huge amount of money to school so as to get knowledge which can be acquired for free with just a click of a button. By leveraging the power of the internet one can get access to unlimited amount of learning materials for free without paying a single dime. One of my favorite learning materials is YouTube videos. There are many different youtubers who are really kind enough to share their knowledge and experiences for free. There are also many non-profit websites out there which offer free learning materials and certifications after finishing their course, as a self-teaching developer I have come across many sites which I learned so much from them I can’t even list them since they are so many. Do not pay anyone out there for their courses unless you know them or they have great recommendations, there are scammers who are only after your money and not about giving you quality courses. Watch out don’t be a victim to this.
· You get quality materials and experience.
The learning materials out there are so many which you can get for free, by joining some channels I was able to receive different reading materials in form of e-books and pdf. These books have helped me and yet I have never paid anything, there are also many websites which provide free e-books for free one of them I can recommend is PDF Drive it has approximately 80 million books for different subjects and courses. I believe a self-taught person has a lot of experience than a college student, this is because they get to try many different resources out there. A self-teaching person learning procedure is equivalent to a school student studying for an end of year test. I like to compare it to two different lions, one in the savanna the other one in a zoo. The lion in the jungle is more likely to be fit and active since he has to look for food for it to survive, while the zoo lion only wakes up and wait for its daily scheduled food to come. It does not use any of its energy anywhere except while mating.
DISADVANTAGES
The following are some of the disadvantages I have learnt from self-teaching.
· Low Job offers.
Most businesses out there don’t acknowledge self-taught students of being capable to work on their companies. They would set minimum academic level requirement as either bachelor or masters depending on the type of job. This is leads discouragement among self-teaching students. Major companies like google and Amazon have come to ignore academic status and employ people according to their skill sets, I hope other companies will also follow the same example and understand that a certificate doesn’t necessarily means that the person has the required skills.
· Time Consuming.
Learning alone can be time consuming especially when you don’t know how to go about a certain problem. You cannot consult anyone about it except looking it up on Google search or Wikipedia, this might not necessarily solve your problem since sometimes understanding something is all about being slowly coached and mentored physically. Not following your reading schedule is also another time-consuming factor this might be caused by procrastinating one of our huge weaknesses.
· No Discipline
It is in our human nature to not follow rules and guidelines set for us or even by ourselves. For example, when I was learning how to program, I would stop and not resume my learning procedure by weeks or even months this led to low motivation. I had to find a way to make myself keep up with my learning schedule and imagine there is a certain punishment a head
when I don’t follow it.
· Low motivation.
You get tired and frustrated when you can’t understand a certain topic or problem this might make you feel unmotivated and can make you quit. I would like to advise you, when you lose hope in what you are doing and don’t feel like going on. Just remember why you decided to do it in the first place, obviously it’s not a coincidence that you woke up one day and started doing it. Nobody said it was going to be easy, focus on your goals and work hard that’s the only solution.
Conclusion
If you are thinking of starting to self-teach yourself, just know that the path to it might be rough and tough. Find someone who can mentor you in this journey, not many people who start get to finish they give up along the way. There are many people out there kind enough to guide you, don’t be afraid to ask.
adios!!
Finally, I would like to thank you for reading my story, if you are interested in more kindly consider following me. I would really appreciate it.
