Are You a Buccaneer-Scholar?

You life for…

• Firsthand knowledge instead of learning from an authority figure (like a lecture, rules, etc.)
• Self-directed learning. Your methods are heuristic, not dogmatic.

You hunt ideas…

• Curiosity drives you. You are driven by the power of novel and diverse ideas.
• Puzzles intrigue you.
• Complexity dares you. You know that if someone else has learned it, you can too.

You win your place in the thinking world…

• You construct yourself. For you, learning is about ongoing personal transformation, not just fact accumulation. You see yourself as thinker-learner-teacher.
• You earn reputation. You establish and maintain your reputation through the merit of your ideas. You want to earn the respect of people whom you respect.

Source: Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar. How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of Success (2009) by James Marcus Bach.

Here are some of the author’s great secrets:

• My [the author] education is the mind I have constructed and my process of constructing it.
• My mind is free, even from me.
• Most of my learning is a side effect.
• What appears to be chaos is just a form of order I don’t yet understand.
• At a distance, many fun things to learn look scary.
• If I try to understand, but fail, that’s progress.
• Few people out there want exactly what I’m offering, but a few is all I need.
• Intelligence is just a tool. Love is the point.
• Whenever I’m learning something difficult, I keep expectations low, and aspirations high.
• To build my brand name, I must stand for something, even if many people won’t get it or don’t like it.
• Anything I learn is a gateway to everything else I will ever know.

The author’s website is: Self Made Scholar.com.