Confessions of a Failed Autodidact
Learning alone is hard. Learning together is better.
When I was around 9-years-old we lost our house in a fire. It was right after Christmas, and all of our presents from Santa were destroyed. The baby doll my little sister could not sleep without. Gone. Clothes, beds, piano. Gone, gone, gone. Most of everything we owned seemed to disappear with the dark smoke that billowed into the pale winter sky.
Knowing you could lose everything you materially own in one day is not the worst lesson to learn when you are a child. Neither is it all that unique. However, it is quite painful. My parents were stressed with the many details they needed to sort out in order to rebuild their home while also still raising two young daughters.
When you are little, traumatic events become memory itself—the bracing cold of the ice beneath the soles of the feet, the smell and taste of soot in the air, the sight of swift and thorough ruin of the place where just hours ago you were sleeping…
As the great teacher Kohelet (קֹהֶלֶת) says in the beginning of Ecclesiastes,
Vapor of vapors and futility of futilities! All is vanity.
I did not realize this until very recently how the fire affected how I approached my education, how from that moment forward I started to concentrate on what I thought I would have with me for the rest of my life: my mind.
About a year after the fire, I was chosen to sing Schubert’s Ave Maria at my school’s Christmas pageant. While I was waiting in a wing of the church, a priest asked if I was ready. I said yes, but I didn’t know what I was singing because it was all in Latin.
“Do you know the Hail Mary?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s what you are singing. Ave Maria means Hail Mary.”
He went line by line through my music right before the performance and matched the Latin to the English. It struck me that Latin was the key to some rare and sacred knowledge. And I wanted to learn it.
Not long after the pageant, the parochial school I attended started Latin language studies, and I was offered a spot in class. I only needed to get a parent to sign the permission slip. After school I went up to my father and handed over the paper, thinking he would be proud of me because only top students were selected.
My father read it. Then he ripped it up.
He said that Latin was for boys because boys can become priests. Since girls cannot become priests, girls do not need to know Latin.
Far from discouraging me, this made me want to learn Latin more than ever. However, the years passed, and I never got the opportunity to learn Latin in high school or in college. After college I often worked multiple jobs, then I got married and had five children. I neither had the time nor the money to pursue my studies. I tried to learn on my own. I bought textbook after textbook. I struggled and failed, repeatedly and often. Losing the ability to read for chunks at a time due to severe depression also did not help.
Once my mental health stabilized and my family life developed a routine, I was able to try again. I knew at this point that I needed an actual instructor who could teach me for as close to free as possible. This is when I found the Catherine Project—a fruit of the pandemic created by Zena Hitz—which offers Zoom courses in the Great Books and tutoring in both Latin and Greek for free.
My desire to learn is being met, and it has been an immense blessing in my life.
When we find out that a master of a subject is self-taught we are rightfully impressed. Learning something without a mentor or guide is difficult. To reach the level of expert is even harder. However, most of us need others to help us—either as teachers or fellow students. This is why for centuries we have had schools and apprenticeships.
I have mentioned the Catherine Project many times before, but you will have to put up with a bit more because registration for ALL summer courses closes on Monday, April 8th at 5pm, and I want to give you the opportunity to sign up if you would like to. I have already submitted my registration for this summer, but the way the program works is that there is so much demand for courses that one rarely gets into their first choice. Here are my top three selections for this semester:
Aristotle, On the Soul (De Anima)
o Thursday, 7:00pm–8:30pm, 7/18–8/22 (6 weeks)
o Course ID: 2024, Su, RG Aristotle, On the Soul
Abu Bakr Ibn Tufayl, The Self–Taught Philosopher (Hayy Ibn Yaqzan)
o Monday, 6:30pm–8:00pm, 6/24–7/1 (2 weeks)
o Course ID: 2024, Su, RG Tufayl
Geoffrey Hill, Broken Hierarchies
o Tuesday, 7:00pm–8:30pm, 7/2–9/3 (10 weeks)
o Course ID: 2024, Su, RG Hill
If any of these strike you as interesting perhaps you can sign up and there is a chance I will see you over Zoom!
Technology has made it easier to connect those who are hungry to learn with those who are willing to teach. Substack, Zoom, podcasts, and social media platforms have facilitated what looks The Golden Age of Communal Scholarship.
Deep learning of the arts and philosophy—the subjects at the very heart of culture and human flourishing—had always seemed to be locked away in the Ivory Tower with merciless gatekeepers. Most of gates could only be unlocked with money, and if your grades were not excellent then you needed a lot more of it. However, programs are being formed now that give people the ability to learn without keys or keepers. The only one who can keep you from learning is you.
Just take the proliferation of current or recovering academics who are leading online book clubs—many of them for free. I am participating in several…
On
the group recently finished Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and the group, led by , and , is now tackling J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.Those who are paid subscribers get access to conversations about Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter as well. The show is up to Book 2, Part 2: Chapters 5-8.
In June, Close Reads is hosting an in-person, week-long deep dive into Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice at the Chetola Springs resort in the hills of North Carolina. This is of course a paid retreat. (This will be my third time attending. The first two retreats I attended were for Brideshead Revisited and The Brothers Karamazov.)
at is doing a community read-along of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Right now we are on The Two Towers: Book Three, Chapters 1 through 7. John supplements each week with enlightening entries about deep time, ecology, and racism. He also has posts from guests, like who wrote about Fate and Mercy in the Fellowship of the Ring.A number of readers may remember I participated in John’s group reading of Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf, complete with a splendid digression into the music of Prince.
at is doing a not-quite-slow-enough-for-me-read of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. He is currently on Week 13: Book 2 Part 2 Chapters 3 – 9.If you want to read more with Simon, he has developed a vibrant community around the reading of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy: Wolf Hall, Bring up the Bodies, and The Mirror and the Light. And just like a good cross-over show,
links to and contributes to the conversation on his own page.My friend and early Substack cheerleader
at is doing a luxuriously paced group reading of Willa Cather’s My Ántonia. As always, his expertise in American literature is a gift.And during Lent I was the shepherd of a small group on Facebook in reading Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory. Perhaps next Lent I will open it up on Substack, but I was not sure if there would be any demand. That said, you can see that there are plenty of reading communities already, and it seems that more are forming every day.
Are you already doing any of these community read-alongs?
Are there any books you are particularly interested in reading that are not being offered right now?
I would love to hear your thoughts in Comments.
I have beaten myself up about not being able to learn alone. Perhaps I have internalized that aspect of American culture that values self-reliance and independence. Comparison is the devil, and I am still trying to learn how to not scrutinize myself so much, especially when I encounter polymaths and polyglots in real life.
I know I am not alone in this. Feeling the failure. Like somehow I have wasted my life, constantly behind. And not for lack of hard work and or fierce desire to understand the world around me more. In these forums, I am with friends who encounter these same texts and learn with me. I have found a society of perpetual students.
How could life be anything but a state of constant learning?
Thanks, Zina, for this encouraging post. I understand the frustration of trying to learn on one’s own. Indeed, that’s a big part of the life of a scholar. That’s why I appreciate what is going on in this space. The gatekeepers of the ivory tower are, indeed, merciless, though it’s really more of an ingrained system than any individual will that is responsible for the mercilessness, which makes it difficult to reform. I know this, frankly, as one of the “gatekeepers,” though a low-level one. I try to make up for this by telling my graduate students that intelligent people outside the academy will be interested in our work if we present it to them in an encouraging way: we don’t have to dumb it down or make compromises. Simon, Josh, you, and many others are proving this every day here. Well done. (Now if only I could demonstrate to the university that what I do here is more valuable than what I publish in academic journals, because people actually read it and respond to it.)
You amaze me. I am glad you left that fire with your mind ….. it is a gift.