The Dark Side of Self Study

In this video I talk about the dark side of self study. This applies to all subjects, not just math. Learning on your own is great and very rewarding, but it can have some serious pitfalls. In this video I try to address these and explain how you can overcome them. As always, if you have any advice for people, please leave a comment below:)

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[ernestooropeza]

The dark side of selfstudy is when you’ve spent 100s of hours mastering a subject and nobody takes your knowledge seriously because you don’t have a degree in said subject. 😢

[Unidentifying]

I started selfstudy mathematics and physics seriously at 27, to get into University. It was very very hard. I remember I was checking some of your videos when you had only a few thousand subs, cause I was so interested and amazed by the math magic. Now im going to the third year of university physics and astronomy. Took me about 3 years of selfstudy!! Even a few hard failures, I actually failed an important math exam three times, which was asked to get in. Some people even told me to give up, even my mother, but my father believed in me, and I think I might have been close to giving up. But I didnt give up and suddenly I got a 73% and accepted to the study which was an old childhood dream. Now im working with one of the most respected physicist in my country on a breakthrough paper related to unified field theory, which is completely from my idea. I still have issues with studying on time and primarily the discipline to do homework :)) I hope people read this comment because I believe it can inspire anyone and I'm still not believing whats happening, the love of my life helped me motivate me a lot though

[carlosgarnier]

one of the problems for self-learning is that many authors of math books omit many steps in the demonstrations and that is where the difficulty of studying oneself begins.

[TheMountainBeyondTheWoods]

I'm in my early 40s and decided to get a computer science degree. I had to go back to high school algebra and study all the way up to trigonometry to be able to understand calculus. It was a lot of work and took me a while. My only help were people like yourself and your videos. I even left a comment on a video of yours about a couple of years ago or so because you explained some concept very clearly and i was finally able to understand it. Now I'm just 3 or 4 month away from graduating. Many thanks for making math interesting and understandable for people like me.

My father had a degree in physics and taught me from a very young age how to play chess, guitar, and taught me bits of math and physics as well. And even though it was nothing too complex, it was still extremely difficult for my age, so he taught me how to be okay with the fact that it takes time to learn things, which I think was by far the most important lesson. I feel extremely lucky to have had him as my dad, and even though he's gone now, I can still find him through math. Whenever I learn something new I can occasionally recall lost memories of him explaining it to me, then it eventually makes sense, and I find that truly beautiful. I hope I can do the same for my children one day.

Edit:
I think I left out the most important part about my dad in all honesty, which was he strongly believed in Jesus Christ as our savior, and taught me a lot about the Bible when I was young. I didn't really mention that before because I didn't think this comment would be so popular, but I guess we all have more influence than we realize. So it's very important we lead others in the right direction, and I do truly believe Jesus is the light and the way. He's more than just a name, and more than just a man. He is the son of God, and you can find him everywhere. His name is synonymous with love and peace.

[djgyanzz]

Summary:

1:55 - Self Study is challenging to do when you're not getting things on your own
2:10 - Realise that Self Study is Challenging and create a Game Plan for yourself
2:56 - Go in with the mindset that it will be difficult and you may feel stupid, but you'll put in the efforts regardless and get better
3:48 - Can't Focus in Self Study - Endless choices and Tough to stick to a guide
5:00 - Pick a Game Plan and Do It!
6:00 - Self Study can make you feel Lazy and Unmotivated - IF you don't do it
6:40 - The fact that you're thinking of doing Self Study makes you already better than the remaining 90% of people that don't
7:50 - If you aren't able to follow up on a plan, don't give up entirely, just adjust your plans more realistically and go forward
9:00 - Everything you study in Self Study stays with you a long time, so it's absolutely worth it.

[jimdiroffii]

I've self-studied most of my way through life in computer science. I think the toughest part of self-learning a new thing is getting past simple, fundamental problems as soon as you try to add complexity. Having a mentor to simply explain WHY you need do something can be as valuable as 10 books telling you HOW.

[spacetimemalleable]

Great advice. My biggest problem with self-study is getting stuck on a problem/proof and spending too much time on it. After several hours and sometimes days, I know I should just move on but failure at getting the proof is exceedingly disturbing and demoralizing. So I created a separate folder called "unsolved problems"; document the problem and hope latter in life I have time or get enlightened to return to it. Any suggestions on this?? Thanks.

[miniminerx]

For me, another huge darkside with self study, especially in engineering with hundreds of ways to solve prpblems is the fact that I don't know what I don't know. At a school, a teacher or professor can help you learn the areas that you never knew existed, but when doing a coding project on my own, there are dozens of tools or methods I should use but am not even aware exist. Luckily I'm about to start college so that will help a ton. This is a bigger problem in general for civilization and the whole point of progress and exploration though, to learn that which we don't know we don't know.

[dhaloh]

I have been self-studying at home for a year and everything you said was like.. exactly how it is. I definitely found myself collecting all these resources to amazing courses and then doing a lot of different things, getting lost in the variety of information available. I'm now a jack of all trades, master of none. And even when you find something you want to focus on and study that particular subject, you still get distracted by all these other interesting topics.

[kopp]

The advantages of self study are: You can afford it, and it fits into your schedule. The disadvantage is that it's hard to find the appropriate sources of information on an unfamiliar subject.

[awesomebearaudiobooks]

For me it's the opposite. I don't feel stupid when self-studying. If I don't understand something, I just retry again after a break.
With the University, on the other hand, it reeeally depends on the professor. Some professors make it really easy for you, while others make you suffer and give you bad grades if you don't understand the concept on the first day they explain it.

University is like a gamble of whether you'll get good professors or not, while self-study is more like farming - you plant stuff, and some of it might wilt and die, but with enough care and time, your labor always gives fruits.

[surrealistidealist]

This is so true, and so validating! I feel like I could cry! It's especially hard when working long hours at a job that isn't good for me. After work, I only have so little time and energy left and I can barely keep my eyes open. That's all made it take so much longer and feel even harder to build the competency necessary for getting over my math phobia. But I can honestly say that I'm so happy with and proud of how far I've come!

I've managed to teach myself trigonometry and precalc for the first time all while slowly working through the early chapters in my calc books on limits and differentiation. I'm so excited at the idea of moving on to integration next and then making it to differential equations!!!

After that point, I want to start volunteering as a math tutor, because I don't want anyone else to go through anything like the kind of struggle that I have!!!

[grenin]

This video hits me right in the feels. I spent about 20 years trying to self-learn programming, feeling lazy and stupid the whole time. I just finally got a job as a programmer about a year ago, was quickly promoted, and still find myself explaining stuff to the senior members of my team almost daily.

[momol.]

I recently started to self-study and had a rocky ride. Thank you for making me realize that all the terrible feelings I have from self study is actual normal! It is a huge relief.

[mastershooter]

I feel like every stem degree should require at least an entire semester focusing on self-study because after whatever degree(s) you get, after that you're completely on your own, wheather you're going into research or industry or teaching, you're gonna have to teach yourself whatever stuff you wanna learn on your own.

[smellybathroom]

Always feel like you're cheering me on even though we've never met. I was never good at math in school but professionally I've tought myself a lot of math and it's the best part of my day now. Learning Geometric Algebra for fun, too :)

[mountassaralimi]

Man as a software engineering 25 year old drop out I am juggling between statistics for engineers and mathematical statics and recently started learning about Real analysis. It’s true that I feel scattered. This video is a reminder to be more focused and less time on feeling lazy. Thank you Math Sorcerer 🧙‍♂️

[shortervideos]

I don't know if anyone will ever read this, but I think I have to get it off my chest. I resonate with everything you said in this video. Throughout my late teen and early twenties I didn't know what to do, first was illustration, then filmmaking, then psychology, and lastly I ended up in programming. I had no prior experience, unless you consider being fine at maths one. I decided to go to university for either maths or computer science, and ended up failing the entry exams (same exam for both fields). This happened in 2019. Shortly after a "Beginners Python Course" appeared out of nowhere in my YouTube feed, and I decided to try on my own. It didn't take me long to realize that this is what I needed my whole life, coding is extremely fun and solving a problem is such a satisfying feeling, one that I never felt before. However the good times came to an end shortly after. I realized how vast of a topic computer science is, it was, and still is, so overwhelming. The though of me not being good enough crippled in shortly after, "I'll never be as good as those programmers" I thought to myself. I tried my best to keep going but I wouldn't code/study often, and, just like you said, I'd feel horrible about it. Sometimes when I look at my progress I feel ashamed that "this is it", I feel like there's nothing impressive or worthwhile in my "portfolio". I feel like I wasted my time, almost three years of it. I tried getting better at Python (still learning new things) and started (almost finished by now) a C course, but, and this is the part that I feel I can't tell anyone, I almost broke a couple weeks ago... I almost quit programming as a whole... yet I didn't. A couple of days passed and I felt like I couldn't do it, I can't take away something that brings me so my joy. Some days are fine, some are horrible, but I want to keep going. One day I want to make something that I'm proud of; something that others admire just a little bit; something fun. I know your channel is about maths but one of the fields I want to get into is AI/ML so that's why I'm here. I'll keep going, or at least I'll try. Thank you for this video, I think I'll keep coming here ofter.

[Safrout]

Even though this video is 2 years old on YouTube now, you are talking exactly about how I feel these days.