Notes on Self-Directed Learning

Self-directed learning is challenging and liberating. It’s hard, because it’s all on you — success, failure, and vision. It’s liberating, because it gives you the freedom to learn exactly what you want, however you want, without having to conform to anyone else’s standards. It’s the purest and most effective form of education there is. As …

Thoughts on Writing Every Day for Almost a Year

Actually, to be precise, eleven months. I started this daily-writing thing at the end of January 2017, after talking about it for months and throwing around the word “someday” and never actually doing anything about it. I’d watched my friend do it — he’d started writing every day in the fall of 2016, and he …

Five Misconceptions About Not Going to College

Three years ago right now, I was trying to figure out what on earth I was going to do with my life. Three years ago, in December 2014, I was a senior in high school. I was homeschooled, immersing myself in recorded college lectures and books and self-directed learning, and I had no clue what I’d be …

Catching Sunlight: musings on farming, photography, and seeing

When I first started farming (my first job, in my junior year of high school), I became fascinated by the way the weather changed.   I was working outside for hours on end, full days — from seven in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon — I was in the full elements. The sun, the …