There’s never been a better time in human history to learn new things, all because of Internet and it’s star child, YouTube.

Me and Kaija are both big fans of self-education here. We’re both college drop-outs and self-educated in our field of work. One might say that we’re stubborn and we like to take control of our lives and what we learn, in what order. Others might say we’re arrogant for thinking that we could do better than our sorry-excuse-of-a-school ever did. They’d both be right, especially about stubborn and arrogant.

There was a lot of stubborness, a lot of arrogance, but also a lot of hard work and quite a lot of luck.
Never the less, it all worked out in the end.

I realize that it’s not so simple for everyone. Self-leaning to concept and draw for the entertainment industry is quite different than self-learning medicine or law. I strongly believe that if you’re a doctor, you should go to a school for it – but if you want to learn an instrument, and if you have willpower, interest and tenacity to keep it up; then you have an option to do it by yourself.

Kaija’s been learning guitar as of late. I’m amazed how many great guitar teachers there are on Youtube. The best thing is, that if you’re not learning – then you can only blame yourself.

Want to be a digital artist instead? Here’s a living Grand Master of concept art, Feng Zhu talking and painting over his own videochannel. He’s got over 60 instructional videos over there. Most of them epic fantasy or sci-fi paintings, but paintings never the less. Just like with the guitar, you won’t become a good drawer just by watching these videos though, you also have to put in hundreds of of hours of manual labor.

If you’re a busy bee and prefer to learn passively, while jogging, working or what ever you happen to be doing – then this might be for you instead. John and Hank Green host a great video series called “Crash Course” where they teach several subject matters from history to social economics to chemistry. Best thing, it’s always in under 15 minutes. Now you won’t become a professor with this yet, but anyone with a broad understanding of the world is a smart person in my books. It’s better to know a little bit of everything, than nothing at all.

What was once truly the privilege of the rich, restricted to the elite of world – is now totally accessible to everyone. Yale University‘s lectures have some of the smartest and most learned people in the world. Not to take in this opportunity to learn free seems ridiculous.

Unfortunately, no matter how free and open, I can’t keep myself awake during the economics lessons. But, we wholeheartedly recommend this Introductions to Psychology.

With all this free education and information around us, some might question why to even go to a University. As someone who dropped out of his college education, I feel like a hypocrite defending them, but I think university and college are not for learning a skill, but for learning how to become an adult. It’s the first time in a young person’s life that they have to pay their own bills, make their own food (if they’ve been lucky enough to have parents) and take responsibility of figuring out what they want to do with their life.

And while people hardly ever figure out their life, at least they learn to take care of themselves.

Some time ago I wrote a post about free writing tools. Since we’re on the subject of online education, it feels relevant:
http://runfreakrun.com/2013/02/on-free-writing-tools/

Love & learn,
Silver