I love to learn, but hate lectures...

I've discovered that I truly love to learn. Four years ago, I don't think I would have agreed with this statement - perhaps, maybe not even four months ago! I think my years in public school may have turned me off to "learning" due to the "lecture & learn" format of most classes.

When I was homeschooled (K-3), I don't remember very many "lectures" - other than maybe reproductive health, I do remember a "lecture" on that (don't ask me why - I just remember sitting in our "school room" and my mom doing a lesson on the reproductive organs - maybe because it was a rare teaching form that was used in our schooling) - and I truly remembering loving to learn. I can remember projects we did, activities we did, and times of sharing information with other HS families.

But, when I started going to PS, I remember being bored a LOT. Part of the problem was that due to my HS experience, I was advanced in the grade level material but our school district didn't allow grade skipping. But even when we reached new material, I still remember being bored very quickly - I seemed to retain most of the material much more quickly than many of my classmates. And so, I quickly grew bored of learning.

This became especially true in college, where the majority of my classes were lecture style. I enjoyed doing the homework outside of class (as long as it wasn't just busy work - no teacher should EVER assign busy work!!), but often dreaded the time I had to sit in class. I discovered that even when I had a passion for studying a particular topic (mainly Bible & missions - my eventual major), I still had a hard time sitting in a non-participant lecture. I would much rather be doing assignments on the material or working with a group to studying and present the material - hands on learning.

Though I have always been a "sponge" that can easily soak up information in most any form that it is presented, lecture style teaching turned me off to learning until recently...

Recently, I have rediscovered my love for learning. I have become a HUGE fan of reading to self-learn. Over the past six months or so, I have done a lot of self-learning by finding a topic I'm interested in and then reading books, websites, blogs, etc about the topic and then attempting to put my newly learn skills into practice.

Various topics I've studied have been:
*starting up a home-based administrative support business (I made it as far as writing up a business plan and actually pitching the plan to someone),
*couponing (re-learning this topic as it's been a few years and the internet was not part of my original learning on this topic),
*living frugally (not cheaply - see my post on this topic),
*budgeting (Dame Ramsey's books were part of my reading list during the my bedrest last fall and recently I've been reading a few other books and websites), and
*HTML how-tos (this is my latest topic - one I am excited to attempt to use!).

As I get excited about a new topic, I feel my love for learning start to explode!

What about you? Do you love to learn? What is your favorite way to learn new things? What have you been learning lately? Feel free to include links to your posts about what topics you've been learning about in your comments... let's learn together!