How do people expand their knowledge after college?

Knowledge doesn’t have to be all about academics, and intelligence isn’t all about academics either. There is emotional intelligence, creative intelligence. To be or have a knowledge seeking personality means diversity, lots of diversity.
I have taught myself many things over the years.

How to play ethnic drums, gardening and plant ID, how to make and maintain water plant gardens, birding and wild bird ID, poultry and waterfowl keeping, how to design plans for a patio, barn and landscaping, ( my dad was an Architect and I inherited his designing eye ) and, most recently, how to renovate an RV.
( It came out adorable! ) IMO to be of a well rounded intelligence one must have a large measure of creative intelligence too. The possibilities of what we can learn are infinite, just takes some imagination. :-)

@Coloma
Thank you! I know I definitely want to pick up kayaking and piano once I graduate. Right now I don’t have a lot of time for extracurriculars.

How did you teach yourself everything though?

@Sunshinegirl11 Just find your new interest and start reading everything you can find, watch videos and either find a class or look for local groups that share your interest. In my area Kayaking is really popular as I live near a very popular river for white water rafting and Kayaking. Meet Up groups and other groups are everywhere or, run your own ad like on C’sList and start your own. Reach out to experts for advice or to bounce your ideas off of.

It’s easy!

College is not so much an institution to teach you things, it teaches you how to teach yourself If you learned anything in college it should be the process of learning for yourself.

If you choose to, you will never “complete” your education.

I’m going to be 63… soon enough (this year), and I quit college after my junior year. However, I have never “stopped learning”. I read history for enjoyment. I’ve learned foreign languages from visiting and working in the places where those languages are spoken. I’ve learned things that I never would have learned in college (including my entire career), and I probably won’t be retired at 65… because I not only know where the bodies are buried in this company, but who buried them, how deeply, and why.

I started an entirely new career – with the same job title and formal position – several years ago when I became “the safety manager” for our group.

Seriously, I’m teaching kids who did graduate college – and who thought they knew everything there was to know – how to operate in the world. I’m also called to consult on a couple of startup businesses remote from me, not so much because of “what I already know”, but “what I can learn, and how fast”.

This is just my approach.

I am a software engineer; I use my brain all day. Some days I’m thinking so intensely all day long that I go home with a headache.

I consider this to be my brain-workout for the day and don’t ask myself to do more work on top of the 8 hours a day I spend at work. I am still learning a ton at work every day, especially because I just changed jobs (so that’s a recommendation I would make also – if you’re feeling too comfortable and bored with your current job, consider going to another company if possible). I also feel I am being kind to myself by not forcing myself to work outside of work and that I would be pretty miserable if I tried to do otherwise.

Are you going into a field that will exercise you intelligence to the level you wish? If not, why not? Education doesn’t have to end when school does.

I’m what they call a “lifelong learner.”

I read a lot, both fiction and nonfiction. I take notes, I check facts, I build on what I know, I reflect on what I learn. One thing I’ve found is that when I learn about something, then it becomes interesting. Another is that no knowledge is wasted; sooner or later I’ll use it somehow.

And another is that everyone I meet, without exception, knows something I don’t know. If I’m lucky, I can acquire a little of it.

I also take classes, avail myself of unusual opportunities, and try things.

I retired seven years ago and still look forward to plenty more learning, and yes, it does keep your brain alive and awake.

You should be curious about things you see and grab every opportunity to know how they work. Don’t ever think you know more than someone else because you have more work experience than them. It’s always possible that they know something which you don’t. Ask questions if you find anything you don’t know irrespective of that.if you find new term / concept try to Google and find it interesting enough then buy a book.

When I was a freshman in college I took a drafting course. That was when “drafting” meant a paper as big as a dinette table, pencils with replaceable leads, and various metal or plastic guides to force accurate angles and straight lines. One appliance that amazes a lot of people was the motorized eraser. If you make a mistake on a drawing that big, you don’t start anew, you erase it and redraw it. Obviously you really don’t want to have to do that, so perfection becomes a habit. Before starting any drawing, you IMAGINE it. Then you start your drawing where you will not run off the edge of the paper and have to erase it. That alone gave me a fantastic ability, a colossal imagination and memory. When integrated circuits were invented, I memorized all the pin connections so I would not have to interrupt my work to look them up. You do not get that benefit from computer aided drafting.

When I took teacher training in the Air Force they ran a short film about speed reading. Most people speak what they read, so they can’t read any faster than they can talk. If you simply look at two words at a time you break that habit and double your reading speed instantly. If you can expand your field of vision more than that, you can read any speed. Your memory expands at the same time so you can retain what you are reading. So even one simple class in speed reading got my speed up to 1200 words per minute. My field of vision just refused to expand any more than that. That happens some time after age 21 or so, but you retain whatever ability you have developed.

So with these mental abilities you can get a lot of knowledge just by reading the magazines in the barber shop while you wait for a haircut.

Travel is one way to increase your cultural knowledge—seeing first hand how people live, what their values are, and drawing the comparisons to your own life. Regularly visit art, history and science museums.
Read, and associate with people who like to discuss ideas.

Life will if you keep your mind open.

On the job training, So much of college is just a way to get your foot in the door of possible places of employment.

PBS, YouTube, Amazon textbooks, radio, library’s, bookstores.

Life experience and reading texts that are not covered on the curriculum.

To me college is just a place where you work to earn a piece of paper that you show to your employer for a job.

In college you don’t have a choice what to learn. And how much you know is strictly determined by your professors and grade.

If you think college is the ultimate place for knowledge then you will never get any knowledge after graduatio since you don’t know how to think independently.

The only things needed to self-teach are a curious mind and a will to learn. Poke questions frequently and try to find answers.

Best education is life experience.
One is always learning whether one is aware of it or not.

There are two kinds of education. Lower classes have always been educated to perform a job. That system produces servants, technicians, and soldiers. Upper classes have always had a very different education in a system that produces generals, philosophers, and entrepreneurs. Here are a book and an essay to help you understand:
The Lost Tools of Learning http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html
The Underground History Of Public Education (PDF) http://mhkeehn.tripod.com/ughoae.pdf

I have been learning about colorful sea slugs the last few days. haha
I love nature stuff.

There is always YouTube.

@Mariah I used to write firmware patches at my old job, I remember going home with a headache too. People don’t realize just how much thought goes into coding. I focused on embedded systems design in school. I’m doing zero now and miss it a little.

I have spent the last few days studying merry-go-rounds. Did it ever occur to you that the wooden animals on a big carousel are worth up to a million dollars? Or that everything you see HANGS from a central bearing?

@ARE_you_kidding_me I fucking hate the movies that depict 15 year old boys effortlessly hacking into government systems or whatever. It’s not so easy that any punk kid can do it, goddamnit.

No kidding, it takes years of regular work and study to get good at coding. I’d say that mentally being a programmer is about as tough as it gets. l have never met anyone below the age of like 20 that was actually a good programmer.

Your perception might change if you read this

Nice @imrainmaker.

There is a difference between “being able to successfully code up an application that works” and being a good programmer. If somebody else tried to read code that a child wrote, they would likely find it very difficult. Good code needs to be readable.

Not only that but almost all of those examples were mobile apps, most of the code they used was written by someone else. Stringing together canned code is different than writing code that does something new. What they had were good ideas, which is different than being a good programmer. I did plenty of “coding” when I was a teenager in quick basic and even a little assembly language on my tandy coco but I could not have written the code I write now after 20+ years experience back then. To be a good programmer you must pay your dues. Period. There are no short cuts.