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Still Adrift

      I haven't updated in a while. I don't really ever expect this blog to be successful. I'd be genuinely surprised if one person finds it and interacts or comments on a post. I mainly did it to document my journey with self-teaching. I'm pretty sure that I'm not learning effectively. A fear is growing in me that I've just been wasting my time. There's no obvious benefit or growth from the efforts that I have been putting in. Then again, it has only been about a month.     One of the biggest problems I have with learning is self-doubt. I doubt my capacity to learn, process, and retain information on certain subjects. This usually causes me to give up on learning that specific subject. I have an issue of spiraling when it comes to being confronted with concepts I find difficult to grasp. The self-doubt is also accompanied by the belief that I may just be wasting my time. The thing that has been holding me back the most is the fact that, in the moment, I can...
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Learning Without Direction

      I've been reading and taking notes (trying to at least). I feel like my note-taking is probably sub-par and my reading comprehension feels shallow.  I've finished Statistics You Can't Trust by Stephen K Campbell and the main concept I took away from it was there was some underhanded way statistics can be misrepresented to create an intended narrative. I'm unsure if I'll ever be able to recall the specifics in common ways stats are misrepresented. I hope I will otherwise I'll feel as though I read that whole book for nothing. I know you're supposed to take notes with the intention of going back to review them, but I kind of doubt I'll be able to recall what the original idea was for each item of my notes. Besides, I'm sure I missed a lot of information in the book that I though was probably extraneous. I really hope to develop a more heightened discernment when it comes to identifying critical information. It did make me a little bit curious abo...
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Attempting to Learn

 It's been a while since I posted. I've been reading a few books: Intuition Pumps and Other Tools For Thinking by Daniel C. Dennett, Statistics You Can't Trust by Stephen Kent Campbell, and Harriet A. Washington. I have to confess that I don't feel as if I'm actually learning when I read them. Even if I am it feels very shallow.  In the case of Dennett's book, I struggled a lot to grasp the concepts, and found myself frequently struggling to keep myself from stressing out reading them and still not understanding. I also learned I had a really hard time pinpointing what I couldn't understand. I understood some of it gradually, but sometimes as the sections went on I lost the point of what he was trying to convey in his sentences. I didn't know what questions to ask to help clarify my understanding. (not quite sure how I can approach finding the right questions to aid my understanding in future reading) Reading both Campbell and Washington, I struggle less...
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 First attempt     I'm basically making this blog as an attempt to record and reflect upon my attempts at self-educating. The highest level of education I've received has been Highschool. I've always been interested in further educating myself, but higher education feels fiscally and mentally inaccessible to me currently. I figure the next best thing is to try teaching myself with the open knowledge provided by the miracle of the internet. I don't really consider myself a smart, clever, or studious person. I only consider myself a person who wants enrich their inner world and increase the opportunity available to me. 
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