My dad taught me sports growing up. Not camping, hunting, fishing, car repair (beyond changing the oil), or home improvement–just sports.
Now, I am not complaining, as many people did not have fathers that even did that. But as a result I don’t know how to do things like: repair a tractor engine, renovate a house, or install a rain water collection system.
So my question to you is: how do you learn these things?
I learn best when someone sits down and shows me, teaches me, how to do something. But I don’t really have anyone who can spend the time with me to school me in these areas, which leaves me mainly with books, manuals, and videos.
I’ve bought the reader’s digest how to fix stuff book, but it hasn’t really helped me do anything. When the air conditioner breaks down, I don’t know the first step about debugging it, and it doesn’t help me to see breakout diagrams of air conditioners. Can’t make heads or tails out of what would be the first thing to look for.
I ran across a promising-looking book a few years back, The Art of Learning. Cool thing was, Josh Waitzkin wrote it, the young chess prodigy immortalized in the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer.
Waitzkin excelled in chess for many years but then lost interest or got burnt out on the game. He then switched to a form of tai chi martial arts and won championships in that, so he wrote a book about how he could so successfully learn new things. I skimmed through it but was not too impressed. While it was great that he accomplished so much, it seemed more a book about him accomplishing greatness in different fields and not about how someone can learn something they have not been trained or schooled in.
As we plan to buy some acreage and move out to our homestead, I know I will need to become skilled at things I have no background in, things like repairing engines, installing solar panels and rain water collection systems, building fences and gates, and so on.
Any tips? How can you learn something without a mentor?
Devin, learning is a life long endeavor. Having a mentor is nice but not always practical. I suggest that you begin with picking up a simple craft, perhaps cooking a new cuisine style, or other “danger free” task. It is not convenient to learn a/c repair when you are sweating over a broken unit. If out wish to learn auto repair, don’t start with your primary vehicle.
In short, learning without someone to teach you the things to avoid, means you will fail along the way. That failure is your mentor. Embrace him and enjo the process. In the end that may well become your favorite means of learning!
Lloyd great points. Yeah I usually only think about learning how something works once it is broken!
I had to fix the o-ring on a kitchen faucet. Didn’t know where to start so I searched YouTube. To me, it is the best source for sharing information like you’re describing. Of course, the things you want to learn are more complex than a kitchen faucet, but my guess is that you could learn the steps in this way.
Also, distance learning education has come a long way, so you might find a course on a specific area “diagnosing tractor engine problems” or something like that. Another place I would look would be your local community college. They are there to connect local constituents with the people who can teach them what they want to learn.
Good post and good questions.
Thadeus, after you and a few other readers mentioned finding how-to’s on youtube, I’m going to start there next time ’round.
Youtube is great for all sorts of stuff.
And the internet in general.
And the library. Remember those?
Devin,
Great topic. You are embarking on a quest that is very important. Self-sufficiency, a lost art, can be the starting point for ownership of the means of production and be the skill necessary to reach a living wage in the market place. Your post reminded of this. Perhaps a school of such is in order; like you, I didn’t learn these arts.
A starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seymour_(author)
JQ, I was hoping you’d say you are a master of all these trades, so you could come up from south Texas and mentor me!
Art of Manliness is a good place as well. But I have little to offer. Perhaps a road trip to your school
Youtube and blog photo tutorials have been so helpful to me. Youtube is especially helpful because you can actually see the human working on the project and hear all the comments that come to mind while working. But the blog photo tutorial bar is set really high these days (bloggers also tend to answer questions regarding their tutorials more promptly, I find
)
Devin,
By all means, but without a mentor, you’re more likely to climb the learning curve more slowly and fall into the pitfalls that I mentor would warn you about.
A few years ago, I installed nailed-down hard-wood flooring upstairs. I had never done this and knew no one who could mentor me. But, given that installers were asking some $10,000, I figured that I could afford small mistakes.
I read how-to articles and watched how-to videos and embarked on the challenge. All these resources were pretty helpful, but I came across difficulties that were never mentioned and that I had to figure out on my own. I learned a lot and can confidently say that I know pretty much everything that there’s to know about installing such flooring.
But, when the time came to install the glued-down flooring downstairs, I was humbled by the prospects of climbing a rather different learning curve and, considering how much more difficult would be to recover from learning mistakes, after all, ripping a board out is much easier when it’s nailed down than glued on concrete. So I got an installer who did the job for a couple of grand, which I figured were worth it.
And I was a darn picky customer, for I was pointing stuff out to the installer that he didn’t expect me to know. And I had upstairs to show him how I expected the flooring to be installed. In the end, he did a good job, but he took the time to do it right under my supervision.
Just don’t be afraid of making mistakes. You’re an engineer, you can estimate how dreaded some tasks are with a pretty good accuracy. And, when wrong, don’t try to fix it yourself, call for help and pay up. Next time, you’ll know how to do it.
Good luck.
Very cool, Augustine. I bet that floor installer thought twice before trying to cut any corners!
Devin,
You asked,
How can you learn something without a mentor? Your question brought be back to the genius of the Catholic system of Tradition, Scripture and MAGISTERIUM.
Experience is the best teacher. And Tradition includes within it, the exercise of the faith of Christ. Scripture, of course, includes the fundamentals. But the Teacher, Mentor, the Magisterium can fill out the important details that can be confused or missed.
Anyway, back to your question. In absence of a mentor to teach and demonstrate, correct and fix the things we’ve done wrong, the only option is trial and error. Nike’s theme comes to mind. Just do it! And if it doesn’t work the first time, try and try again.
Having said that, there are great tutorials on the internet now for almost any subject. Many of them have visual instructions. I recently fixed my own a/c following some tutorials on the internet. I also had my son video what I did and it was great to have that to replay and find what I had done with some of the wires that I couldn’t account for at the end.
Sincerely,
De Maria
Just do it, but do research safety first. You don’t want to find out how big that capacitor in your a/c unit controller is by first hand experience. Also, for that, like most modern machines, it’s often cheaper to replace things (parts at least) than to actually repair. Cars are similar.
I generally consider things as economic decisions, in which the actual expense of hiring a competent pro is weighed against my time (and minor injuries expected and cleanup and etc.). I am fortunate to have grown up building and renovating buildings with my family, but I learned most about making stuff work without the proper tools when I was in Honduras doing missionary work. Necessity is the mother of invention and poverty the beginning of resourcefulness. Remember, there’s the way professionals do things, the way I can do things (which is either better or worse than the pro depending on a bunch of factors) and also the way most of the world makes do with things. Provided you stay safe, you can dive in on most projects and get pretty close or better than pro results (at least by the end of the project) just using experience as a teacher, it only costs you time and effort.
I think the biggest factor is if it has to be done quickly or done right the first time, then you hire someone (but stick around and watch to learn), but otherwise you can also change your expectations, learn to value homemade and handmade and improvised solutions and you’ll get more value and more interesting results from your own efforts besides learning a lot. It’s great to have a story to tell about everything you’ve done around your home – that’s part of the value.
As far a learning the details and steps to do something, I usually find two or three instructions somewhere (Internet, how to book, friend) and try to visualize everything beforehand for how I’m going to do it with the tools and materials I have available. Usually there’s something slightly odd about my plan but that’s what makes it mine. And once you start doing things (especially in home construction and other such things where there’s not really a single right way things have to be done to end in a functional product) you’ll also have the experience to see the odd things in how other people have done similar tasks. Don’t expect anything to come out exactly how the DIY tv show makes it look, your project will have much more character (and then you’ll have eyes to see how even the pros have the same struggles all the time).
Safety shmafety!
Daniel, good food for thought. I need to start getting some necessity and poverty to drive my ingenuity!
I’ve noticed that my children will try things un-self consciously. When learning a new word they’ll say it wrong without worrying that they sound funny, but they’ll try anyway. When learning a memory verse they’ll mumble through the words they don’t remember or completely mangle the verse, not understanding even what they are saying, but they’ll try anyway.
I think that’s why children learn new languages so much more easily than adults. While adults are fretting about correct verb forms little children will simply try to speak, even if they mangle the language. Nobody expects them to speak correctly anyway, they’re children after all, and even their stumbling attempts are rewarded with praise.
I try to remember that when I’m learning something new – sometimes the hardest thing is just to try – its scary to take apart something not knowing whether you’ll be able to put it back together. But sometimes when you’ve worked yourself into a tight spot, and the washing machine is in pieces all over the utility room floor, the best learning can happen.
Ryan that’s true. Often I find myself quitting with these things before I start, since with so much technology and specialization I’m used to simply *not* being able to fix things. But when I do try, I often figure something out.
Also, that’s why God invented duct tape.
SOOOOO simple! You offer the Seltzer family room and board for a couple weeks and viola! Chris will show you anything you need to know mechanics-wise. Of course, Katie may have to throw in some baked goods to sweeten the deal…
I actually would love to have Chris close by and learn from him. Y’all will definitely be extended an invitation to come and visit us!
OR the Rose family is welcome to visit the Seltzer casa while we work on our own modernized homestead. I am quite sure Chris would love the help, I mean, to show you how to build/fix anything mechanical.
Apropos: http://bit.ly/SwpkL1