Translated material
Live according to the laws of autodidactics
Olga Solomina,
doct. Geogr. sciences, deputy. Director of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences:
- What is the role of self -education in your life?
- The fact is that my path to science is atypical.
My basic education is almost completely not correlated with what I am doing now. I graduated from the Faculty of History of Moscow State University (evening department, the Department of Source Studies), but I have never studied history in my life, not a single day. In parallel with my studies, I worked at the Institute of Geography and there first defended the candidate, and then a doctoral dissertation with a specialty "Sushi and Water Resources". It is clear that I had to finish the exams, but there were few of them. Therefore, the role of self -education in my life is huge, but, which are obtained in this way, unfortunately, is not enough. Of course, you need to study humanly. We must study at the university, because this is the time when the brains are young, knowledge is quickly absorbed and you have time and the opportunity to plunge into the deeper layers of science. This is the only way to become the bearer of this knowledge, and not a superficial expert.
I don’t know if you read such a book - “Autodidactics” [1]. This is an old book, published in the 1980s. Its author is Valery Kurinsky. This is an unusual guy who, apparently, lived according to the laws of autodidactics, i.e. self -learning. And in his book there are many, many different interesting techniques, how to teach himself. In particular, he knows many languages, believes that you need to learn languages all the time, and advises how to do it.
The idea of Kurinsky’s autodidactics is that if you read something and do not know something, but you have the idea that it would be good to find out, then you just need to get up, take a book and find out. Here, of course, among other things, will be required. And this, indeed, expands the horizons in a more efficiently-out-and-and-out “tree” way, and not a square-nest or linear. He has many interesting tips. For example, when you write an article and feel that it is about to get tired of it, you need to get up and interrupt for a while, so that there is a feeling of joy from this work, from this hit. But work on the article should not be postponed for a long time, otherwise you will have to overcome inertia again, which is always very noticeable at the beginning of any business.
- How did you manage to catch up with the necessary knowledge, go from the "soft" science to natural?
- It was not possible! It was necessary to teach physics, chemistry, mathematics. All this is not, and this is terribly lacking. So I compensate for unknown knowledge through self -education. In addition, I got a job abroad with my colleagues - in America, in Germany and I am quite successful in my field, I publish a lot in international publications (and even with Hirsch I have everything well, according to the standards of our science), but I still had an inferiority of inferiority from the lack of fundamental education in the field of natural sciences. True, people of the humanitarian warehouse, to which I attribute myself, partially compensate for these shortcomings with the ability to think with images, integrate, entertaining and writing, invent different unusual constructions.
Talked by Natalia Demina