For example I was taught Photoshop and Video Editing (Premier) at college as part of my Multimedia course but I never, ever really loved doing the video work. The funny thing was I always was interested in video work but as soon as I started to do it I realised I had no creative drive to make anything I was ultimately proud of.

I picked up all of my web design skills (HTML, CSS, JS etc) pretty much on my own and because I had a passion and drive and a some design ability I was able to learn without realising because I enjoyed it so much.

At the end of the day I’d say if you love something, you will learn it. But if you need to know or do something you will be taught it.

Take driving for example. I don’t love to drive and am not very good at it. For this reason I was practically forced into how to do it simply because its an important life skill (took me almost 6 years to get a licence).

Weirdly, I love cars, engineering and car design but have no passion to actually sit behind a wheel.

This should be interesting. I have been learning Photoshop, on my own, for over a year. Last week I found out about an online course which I signed up for. It will be interesting, to me, to see what I have been able to learn on my own. The first class was all stuff I have learned, already. I’ll see what happens and let ya’ll know. LOL

I had a professor in college who gave us the tools to good learning habits.

Thank you,

Su

I also see where you are coming from with wanting to have had a foundation set down before you went off on your own, and perhaps that is the way to go. Thanks for sharing.

I also want to touch on the act of teaching as a method of learning.

Yes, you have to either “learn” or be “taught” something before you can “teach” it. But I have found that teaching something acutally reinforces your own learning. In my experience, the act of explaining something to someone else, either by demonstration or by verbal/written communication, really requires the teacher to synthesize the information an organized, concrete way. Teaching and learning can be reciprocal in the way it reinforces for the teacher what they already know about the subject. Furthermore, it causes the teacher to consider the subject matter from different angles and points of view in order to effecitvely reach the students. Also, interactions with students can open up new avenues of consideration for the teacher.

So, Teaching, in a way, is like learning. Whether you were originally taught something or if you learned it on your own, going forward and teaching it requires you internalize the information in a deep way, which is a more effective way to learn than just being taught something and more synergistic than simply learning something on your own.

The course I’m doing now hasn’t been the most informative. I entered first year expecting to have a timetable full of lectures and workshops. However, the structure was more “here’s a brief, go do it”. This was ok for the majority of the class who had already been to college, but for me, who had come straight from high school with very limited knowledge of the basics of design, it was incredibly intimidating! I worked through it to the best of my ability, and although now I look back and cringe, I feel proud of what I did with so little teaching at the time.

In January, I had a three month placement with a small web design company. I genuinely believe I learned more there in three days than I had in three years of university. The company designer was entirely self taught and although we didn’t always agree on designs, I learned a lot from her. When there was no work for me I spent my time researching design blogs and websites and I think this has made a significant impression on my latest works this year.

I enjoy taking my learning into my own hands but I think I would be more confident in myself as a designer if I had gotten some basic training in the principles of design. However, one good thing that has come from not being taught is I’m not constrained to a certain way of designing, as some people have mentioned above. True, I’m still finding my feet, but I’m enjoying discovering how to do it my way.

Personally, I think that learning is better. You learn to learn, identify and solve problems, figure out what is important in a large scope of things and also develop a sense of fearlessness where not knowing how to do something is not a barrier.

The one down side is, for me anyhow, is that you sometimes lack structure, order and fundamentals.

The best of all possible worlds would be, someone who is driven enough to learn most on their own, but having someone around to ask questions have discussions with. For me that’s one of the great revolutions of the internet. How many resources are available to me in the dead of night from like minded folks around the world. Still nice to have a good friend or co-work to bug sometimes though.

If I head to pick one though, I’d pick learning. My co-workers want me to show them everything all the time and it’s a thankless circle sometimes, especially, when I just go to google to find the answer and I wonder why in the hell they could not be bothered to do that.