Going beyond the curriculum: How to keep learning!
Disclaimer: These observations of mine are heavily skewed by my Engineering background, so do feel free to critically examine this and create your own understanding of what you need based on what you study.
In the 21st century, it is no longer enough to just study and mug up what has been served up to you by your university and think that is going to be enough to help you get by in this world. The world keeps getting more competitive and trying to keep afloat is the same as sinking down in the abyss of mediocrity that is easy to fall into. But you don’t have to be worried just yet! The first step is to believe that you can rise and stand out amongst what is around you. Once that is done, now you have to think of ways of actually achieving said goal.
You would have realised by now that while you may have to cram a lot into your brain to prepare for your final semester exams twice a year, very little of what you learn is actually helping you when you enter your industry. I have always heard about my seniors having to go through ‘training’ for a few months before they are considered an ‘asset’ to their companies they work for. This obviously means that the present education system is clearly inadequate for most of the students as even companies know they aren’t ready to take on the work they want them to do. Also they don’t teach the really important things that our adult life will be packed with:
While we should know about things like the French Revolution and mitochondria (to understand memes about it obviously!), we are going into a world where it is on us to:
- Keep ourselves healthy and fit even with a busy schedule- knowing what and when to eat, having a basic awareness of how to do some activity and not fall for ridiculous food supplements or scams promising to gain/lose X kg of weight and all that.
- How to manage our money- Basically how to pay your taxes, knowing what to spend and when, what would be good investments and what would be scams, not joining the pyramid schemes and all.
- Sex education and self awareness- Even now, talking about anything related to love or sex or porn seems to make many people awkward for some odd reason. It might not been mainstream to talk about it, but don’t treat it as a taboo. Many people suffer because of the lack of a solid idea about these issues and thus develop a wrong understanding which they take into their late twenties. Also you see people showing a lack of empathy to others and having a warped view of the world around them. They lack some key qualities which creates conflicts with others around them.
With that being said, here are my two cents on how you can overcome the deficiencies that the system provides with you, since let’s face it, change in the education system will take ages and you may not see the benefits of any positive change in the education system.
Here are some of the things I would recommend:
MOOC- The power of the Internet
Massive Open Online Courses are the great equalizers that people wish for! Why travel thousands of miles or have to struggle through entrance exams to go and study in top universities where the teaching quality can vary teacher by teacher, when you can get the best teachers for each domain online! While the incentive of getting your basic degree from a top university will remain high, that doesn’t necessarily stop you from gaining knowledge in the subject or field you wish to be involved in. Platforms like Udemy, Udacity, Coursera and edX to name a few, offer quality courses you can learn at your pace, and crucially gain certifications if needed by paying a token fee. It is not so much about the certifications but rather the knowledge gained which you would not get in your university curriculum or even if there is, you wouldn’t learn at the rate or the kind of information that you would need.
Peer-to-Peer or Master-Slave networks
This is just a fancy way of saying that you can always gain knowledge from the people around you! Friends aren’t just for sharing memes with or in some cases doing Tik-Tok collaborations (is that what they call those cringe videos now?), but they offer new perspectives on topics and can help you with things you might not have understood immediately. They always are there in your best interests and I have had the privilege of talking to people who have either given me invaluable ways of understanding topics before an exam or people with insight talking about things like Internet 3.0 with IPFS being the future of the Internet. You won’t grasp all of the ideas all the time, but the trick is to keep being involved in such enlightening conversations all the time. Eventually you will start being able to contribute to the discussion with your gems.
In a similar vein, don’t just waste the best professors of your university or college by just restricting them to lectures. Keep engaged with them, ask thought provoking questions and go beyond what is taught. They would enjoy students who do that more as they have to exercise their brain beyond the mundane work that both students and teachers have to do. You are doing the best teachers you know a great favour by involving them.
YouTube Videos
There is obviously a distinction between MOOCs and YouTube videos in that you won’t get certifications for listening to YouTube videos, but there is no lack of insight or information that many good YouTubers provide. The whole platform is full of different varieties of video content which can be entertaining as well as educational in nature. It doesn’t have to be necessarily related to what your field of study is- there is so much knowledge about things you can get to. I can’t go into too much detail as many of you who are reading study different things but I would most definitely recommend you watch Bill Wurtz’s ‘History of the Entire World, I guess’ where he suitably covers the entirety of history as we know it into an fun filled twenty minute package. There are good YouTube videos out there and it’s upto you to find out (will do an article on this but on a narrow domain- focused on Computer Science).
Podcasts
With podcasts, it’s an acquired taste. You have to accept that it is not necessarily something you can quickly extract information out of. Think of it as the peer-to-peer discussion we talked about, but you are in the third person witnessing that conversation. It might seem frustrating, and you may feel tempted to skip through the banter or waffling that happens during the course of the conversation, but once you get the idea behind it, you will find it useful when you are traveling or exercising, listening to ideas and knowledge being exchanged. Again, I would recommend some podcasts in a future article considering there is a vast variety of quality podcasts out there.
Research Papers
You may have noticed the absence of something that would be considered by many as a pivotal part, a pillar that makes learning what it is: a book. While I am not against books as such, as they still hold lots of invaluable information, there are two reasons I haven’t discussed it in much detail:
- With the rise of the internet, there are better ways to understand ideas and process content. Books alone cannot always provide that as some of the books are written in such a way that many fall to sleep reading through the words.
- Another reason is that with the rate of flow of information and discoveries being made in the modern era, by the time you start reading the book, some of it’s content would already be outdated. So if you are going to read something that might be beyond your comprehension, go for the latest research papers that are published. Again, in contradiction to my previous point, you may not grasp it immediately. But don’t worry if you don’t, you can read again and try and understand it after going through alternate material. It’s not like someone is going to test you on it, so don’t worry!
Note that for some topics, the content in books won’t be considered outdated- for example Shakespeare works will always be considered important in an English Literature class no matter the decade you read it in.
Social Networks:
There are so many ways of using your social media to help you in your quest for knowledge. Some of these include:
- StackOverFlow: It’s not just there for coders, there are forums for everyone.
- Reddit: So many subreddits for each topic, they share relevant content that you would be interested in.
- HackerNews: Their content is skewed towards tech and startup news, but good to keep updated with the latest through user-curated content.
- Twitter: Follow the relevant people in your field who talk regularly about the topic you want to know more about.
- Facebook groups: Like minded people talking about the topics they want (although quality is lower compared to the previous mentioned platforms).
- Quora: Some good answers on certain topics are present, just that you have to dig deep to find them.
Recommended Resources
Finally, here are some websites you should keep track of and check out once in a while to gain knowledge about stuff you should know (more details in a future article):
Duolingo: To learn new languages.
Lifehacker: Get some tips about how to handle situations.
AllThingsWorkplace: Like the tagline says, teaching smart people practical ways of becoming extraordinary.
Investopedia :Learn your finances day by day through their dictionary.
If you guys have any other ideas I would have obviously missed out on, do comment on it here or hit me up here! Don’t forget to leave a few claps if you liked this and do share!
