I want to "minor" in a new field on my own time. How?

July 19, 2024 1:53 PM

Thinking about what I'm missing in my life, and what gives me the most pleasure, I realized I want to learn something new at about the same depth as an average liberal arts college minor -- in neuroscience, say, or history (more academic than applied). This can take place over a long period of time like 4 years. I do have a pretty packed life, so it is going to be purely on a hobby schedule (~ 8 hours/week). What's the best way to do this?

Some relevant facts:

I'm in my late 30s and likely not as sharp as a college kid.

I do have a quantitative science and humanities background, and a decent memory.

"Minoring" is a bit misleading because I don't intend to write critical essays or anything like that -- I just want to gain a solid, nuanced understanding of a field.

I prefer reading or audio to videos (which is why I'm wary of Coursera).

I enjoy popular non-fiction, but I am keen to see a field from a more serious lens as well.

I can throw up to $500 a year at this.

My first thought is to pick up some course lists and syllabi and make my way through them, but I'm curious to hear if anyone's tried that and what the pitfalls are, as well as other tips for this (staying disciplined within reason, productivity/gamification apps that might help, particularly great free/cheap online courses, etc).

posted by redlines to Education (7 answers total)

I've been doing this sort of thing since I graduated from college in 1991. There are a whole host of ways to approach it. Which methods you use will depend on you and on the subject.

For instance, community college (or community ed courses through various learning institutions) are often great. I used them for writing in the 1990s, to learn photography in the early 2000s, and I'm currently using them to learn drawing and watercolor. Basically, community college classes are great for anything where feedback/workshopping could be helpful.

For other subjects, I just read books. Like you suggest, I might seek out some syllabus. Often I don't. Instead, I pick one book on a subject that interests me (a biography of a President, for instance), then let that book inform what my next pick is. This is how I learned about personal finance: reading books about saving and investing — hundreds of books (not kidding) about saving and investing.

For many subjects, I buy classes from the Teaching Company (or whatever they're called these days -- the Great Courses?). When I wanted to learn about classical music, for instance, I purchased Robert Greenberg's course on Understanding Great Music (excellent course, by the way). When that was finished, I purchased other courses from Greenberg. I'd say that I've probably exposed myself to the equivalent of a music minor (but without the performance aspect).

Other times, it can be useful to find a group of folks who want to learn the same thing you want to learn. Form a reading and/or experiential club. My girlfriend is interested in mycology right now. She's got a couple of groups she hangs out with to learn more about hunting mushrooms. I once knew a group of guys who got together a couple of Saturdays a month to teach each other woodworking.

Finally, YouTube can be a great place for autodidacts, but you have to be careful. Many (most?) YouTube videos are superficial and just for clicks. This is true even among seemingly academic subjects. Still, you can almost always find one ore more channels that provide high-quality information about any given subject. For instance, as I'm studying art I've waded through a lot of channels with lots of basic-level info that exist only to pitch products. In doing so, I discovered the amazing and super-generous James Gurney. His channel is packed with useful knowledge he's acquired during ~50 years of studying art.

Bottom line: There are many ways to do this. You can be as formal or as informal as you'd like. There's no need to overthink anything. Just pursue whatever you're interested in right now, and let that lead you to follow-up topics! Most of all, have fun.
posted by jdroth at 2:25 PM on July 19 [5 favorites]

I do something like this. When I pick a topic, I look up syllabi from various universities to see which books they list as required reading. And I read those.

There are of course thousands of ways to do this, and that's only one of them, but it's basically just a reading list built from college syllabi.
posted by Meldanthral at 2:30 PM on July 19 [1 favorite]

I'm a frequent contributor on a forum where people often ask, how can I learn more, and my answer usually is:

Linguistics is a fairly accessible field to study on your own because there is a core set of topics that most programs will cover, and you can usually teach yourself the basics about those topics by working through a textbook. For example, a linguistics degree will include phonetics and phonology, so you read an introductory phonetics textbook and an introductory phonology textbook. It's pretty standard.

It does require some motivation and aptitude; you'll do better if you enjoy it and you have strong analytical skills. But it's not as challenging as a field like physics, and doesn't (have to) have any sort of lab or interactive component.

It's also a degree where a lot of your evaluation is based on assignments (which are often included in the book) and exams, rather than things like writing papers or giving presentations. I mean, students do write term papers for higher-level classes, but it's not as fundamental to learning how to think linguistically as it is in some humanities, for example.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:11 PM on July 19

This is what auditing classes at an institution is for. Depending on where you are you may have access to lower cost in person classes, online courses or video archives of lectures and course materials. If you share your closest big city there are probably mefites who can provide opinions on different places near you.
posted by Mizu at 7:15 PM on July 19 [3 favorites]

Mizu has it but faster than me. Most public universities in the US will let you audit a course, which generally lets you to go through the motions without having to worry about every assignment.
posted by zenon at 7:42 PM on July 19

For example at UIUC you would essentially be a ‘listener.
posted by zenon at 7:48 PM on July 19 [1 favorite]

Perhaps check out Open Courseware
posted by TimHare at 9:09 PM on July 19 [1 favorite]