On Learning

Learning is hard work and passion required to overcome biases towards unfamiliar things.

It's really easy to dismiss something as being so scary or complex that there's no use to try and understand it.

When I was in high school I had a really bad experience with math for a variety of reasons. I barely passed my high school math classes and stopped at Algebra II, only slightly enjoying Geometry. As a practical learner, there was no reason to go out and learn it.

As a designer / developer now, i've seen small peaks of it in a new light, as part of typography & grids, in code and in Machine Learning, and in electronics. All these examples have been a great reminder to keep an open mind and not get discouraged when learning design related fields or subsets. Stepping back from preconceptions and stereotypes (whether towards visual style, programming language, music genre or research methodology) and taking the time and effort to learn/master something can be really fun.

When you think about it, we really don't know much at all anyway – even more so when we hold ourselves back.

Thoughts? Reply at @aetherpoint.