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Learning by Doing
Wednesday, 5 August 2009
I often have discussions with friends about the paths taken in a working life. How do you find out what you like doing? How do you find out what you want to do?
Often the names of universities, companies and other institutions and potential employers get thrown around, along with the names of many people and various books for good measure.
My answer is usually “do it”.
I think that learning something by doing it is the only way to, well, learn something, rather than theorize endlessly about it; it is the only way to find out whether you like doing the thing you are talking about at all.
Photographer Alec Soth’s1 advice for young photographers:
“Try everything. Photojournalism, fashion, portraiture, nudes, whatever. You won’t know what kind of photographer you are until you try it. During one summer vacation (in college) I worked for a born-again tabletop photographer. All day long we’d photograph socks and listen to Christian radio. That summer I learned I was neither a studio photographer nor a born-again Christian. Another year I worked for a small suburban newspaper chain and was surprised to learn that I enjoyed assignment photography. Fun is important. You should like the process and the subject. If you are bored or unhappy with your subject it will show up in the pictures. If in your heart of hearts you want to take pictures of kitties, take pictures of kitties.”
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright also believed in learning by doing.
But enough names.
Do you like photography? Get or make a camera, start taking pictures and find out. Are you interested in architecture? Why not give it a try? Do you want to write? Well, here I am, trying my hand at it by…writing.
Tomorrow: Learning by doing benefits from measurable progress, goals and outlets.
1 I’d omit ‘young’ from the sentence. You are never ‘too old’ to learn something. It just may take longer, which means you should begin learning something by doing it now!
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