Walker was a college graduate, but college only worked for him because his program allowed him to build his own course of study and he had a lot of control over his education. He had various interests and he was able to integrate all of those in his studies.

Because of the success of his bachelor’s degree, he initially planned of studying philosophy in grad school. After interviewing the person he wanted to study with and sitting in some of his classes, it became clear to him that his interests and disposition didn’t match what was required in grad school. He realized that school is not a requirement to do the things you are interested in.

Not going to grad school meant that he was free to choose his approach to learning the philosophy he was excited about. He stopped reading secondary literature and focused reading classics, philosophical texts, and contemporary literature on the philosophy he was interested about.

Since no one dictated to him what to read, he asked librarians for advice as well as friends and people who were interested in similar subjects. When he didn’t understand stuff, he talked to people. But he realized that he was most interested about the things he did not understand and journey in grappling with them.

He set his own learning goals.

When he wants to move on to a new writer or subject, he pauses and asks himself, “Am I done or am I worried I don’t have the intellectual capacity for that?” If he knew he was simply worried, he tried to push himself further and not change reading paths.

While self-studying philosophy, he got interested in radio. He started interviewing people about ideas and channeling his studies into radio pieces. The interviews were the same conversations his friends were having in their grad classes.

He said that the desire to share motivated his reading and learning. Public outputs and conversations were an integral part of his learning process. They kept a record of his learning and thinking, which helped him retain what he was learning and build upon them.

Here is how he confirmed that his self-directed study of philosphy worked for him:

I also had the perfect confirmation that my self-study was a big success when I met an upcoming young Nietzsche scholar who was a friend of a friend. When we hung out and talked, I realized that I had done just as well on my own and perhaps maybe even better. I didn’t feel like I was not qualified to talk about some things because I wasn’t in school. I have to say that I came away from that meeting feeling not only happy and pleased with the decisions that I had made, but feeling that maybe my deci- sions were even better than his, and that I understood as much of it as he did. Here was someone who did what I was thinking about doing but yet he and I were on the same level!

References

Stark, K. (2013). Don’t Go Back to School: A Handbook for Learning Anything. Greenglass Books.