Learning With Personal Projects

What is an adult scientist but a kid who’s never lost the curiosity.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

I love learning! I like to consider myself a student of life, someone who is always taking in new information and trying to grow every day. The idea that you are done learning once you leave school makes me laugh because to me the education you receive at school is like a primer for life. One of my favorite things to learn about is how things work.

Now you might ask, why is that important or what will that do? If you don’t have to work on or fix what ever it is, why do you need to understand how it works? And you are right, its enough to have a basic understanding of how what ever it is works and you’ll be fine. But if you know how something works under the hood your control over it is stronger and you can use it for more than it’s intended purpose! There are many great ways of learning new things but my favorite way of learning something is making a personal project that uses what I am trying to learn as the center piece of the project.

There area a few reasons I like doing this, first and most importantly, is that when you create a project around what you are learning, you not only have to think about what you have learned but you have to also now mold it around what you are doing. This forces you to do critical thinking about what you are learning which helps you learn what you are doing much more than just reading it. With that said you are also practicing what you have learned while the information is fresh.

Finally, when you create a project for what you are learning, you are invested in the project emotionally and you are more interested in it. By doing this it you are also more inclined to follow through with what you are doing than getting distracted and leaving it incomplete. A nice side product is that you get something out of the project when it is completed that you can use. For example if you are learning a new programming language or framework and decided to make a photo gallery to help you learn, when you are finished working you will now have an awesome photo gallery that you can use to organize your photos and you will have a sense of pride when ever you use it because you built it with your own two hands!

Learning is very important and we all should try to keep learning through out our life. It makes us more interesting people and helps expand our abilities. It opens new doors for us by expanding our skills which could lead to new jobs or opportunities. I hope that you keep learning and keep creating cool things!