Sunday, August 12, 2007

I am an Autodidact

I recently stumbled upon this Wikipedia entry and began to feel good about myself. What a weird thing to say. I read an entry that I think describes most of us, but I want it to describe me continually through out my life.

The entry, on Autodidacticism, describes a person who is self-educated or self-directed in learning. An autodidact, also known as an automath, is a mostly self-taught person.

Yes, I have a formal education. Yes, I is a high school and college graduit, and I even have a Master of Arts degree thrown in for good measure. But it was during that graduate time when I learned what it meant to have depth--or maybe that I learned that there is so much depth. Every discipline has it's own basic level of understanding, but one can always keep diving into levels below the "vocabulary" level where you begin to discover that there is a great deal of interconnectivity in the area you are exploring and many other disciplines.

From the article:

A person may become an autodidact at nearly any point in his or her life. While some may have been educated in a conventional manner in a particular field, they may choose to educate themselves in other, often unrelated areas.


That's me. I love exploring various interests in music, church history, American history, baseball history, baseball current, how the internet works, websites, how computers work, networking, how the mind works, social connectivity, streamlining, efficiency, lateral thinking, philosophy, art analysis, movie making, Bible study, word study, Christian apologetics, weight training, pedagogical issues in many fields. I love to dig into something but frustratingly come to a place where I don't know what to do with what I've learned. Still, the fun for me is in the learning!