Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Thoughts On Self Education

I received a comment yesterday sitting on the train while I was reading MBA In A Day. Some guy said, "I learned more from reading books than I did spending six years in college, it is more efficient and faster." I never got the guys name. But, I think in many ways this is correct. Teaching yourself to learn for your own purposes is a gift. Not everyone is self directed. Libraries are a boon to this kind of thinking.

Anyways, I am off to work. I will be finishing up reading MBA In A Day will give my thoughts on the book later tonight or tomorrow.

Today has managed to be pretty busy. I am one of two librarians at the reference desk, so I have spent a lot of time answering peoples questions today.

There are also two programs going on today. I helped them find some anime dvds for the teenagers to take out, Wings of Honnemaise, Ghost In The Shell, Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Our Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso, The Castle Otranto, Castle In The Sky, Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind, Tenchi Muyo, Fist of the Northstar and other anime classics which we have as part of our film collection. A few other titles were checked out already like Neon Genesis Evangelion and The Animatrix. A lot of stuff by Hayao Miyazaki. I hope they like the program.

The other bit of business was helping make sure a SCORE Marketing workshop was done correctly. We signed up nine people to attend the program. Seven people are currently listening to the speaker. A lot of it was calling all the people who signed up for the program to ask them to come the day before. We set up the tables in a u shape, much like a big conference table. Light refreshments were put out as well. We get juice, water, and cookies for people to drink and eat.

Right now I am doing the night shift at the reference desk. I have three unopened magazines sitting next to me, the May 15, 2008 Library Journal, the May 19, 2008 Publishers Weekly, and the May 15, 2008 Booklist. I am kind of reluctantly looking at them. I took a quick look through them. I chose a few reference books to order and put a book on hold, In The Court of the Crimson King by S.M. Stirling. I am a bit intrigued by God's Demon by Wayne Douglas Barlowe. However, I am a bit wary of the content. Wayne Barlowe's site is really fascinating http://www.waynebarlowe.com/

I am off tomorrow, because I work this Saturday, luckily our time is a bit flexible where I work. We don't get overtime, but we do get some flexibility with our time arrangements so it evens out in the end.

3 comments:

TOPolk said...

Very true. More times than not, you may learn more from reading than you would from sitting in a classroom. Unfortunately, reading does not produce a degree that is potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Life's so unfairly structured sometimes.

Unknown said...

I agree. I think self-teaching is one of the most effective means of learning because you are focusing on material that you are truly interested in and you will absorb and retain more information when it's meaningful to you. Great blog!

Best wishes.

Sincerely,

-Liane Schmidt.

Book Calendar said...

Most MBA's are not worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. For example, the average in New York is about 80,000 for being the head of a company. Not as much as you'd think.

The people who do well with self-education are the ones who turn it into a business of some kind. It doesn't take a degree to start and run a business. You'd be surprised what some people are capable of.

Self-education has taught me far more than I ever would have learned in school. School is a socializing ground for a profession.

The people who on average earn huge amounts of money are the information architects (ph.d.'s in comoputer science averaging over 120,000 a year and able to go pretty much anywhere. Also, lawyers earn huge amounts of money in the long term. Surgeons also makes lots of money.