This is an option, however would have to get quite serious about learning this stuff (balance gain / reward against things like tuition fees, learning in my own time outside of long work hours, etc).
I don't know about you but a lot of people need the external motivation of school deadlines and the bad marks on a permanent record to actually do the material.
Exactly. I told myself for years that I was better off doing the material on my own. The autodidactic tradition is strong among computer programmers, and I suspect that many reading this would feel the same way. But the truth is, I have learned 10x more in one year of school than I did in five years of muddling through textbooks on my own. Fear of failure is a strong motivator, as is immersing yourself in a community of like-minded people.
I guess it really just depends on what motivates you. Grades never motivated me, and I never felt like my academic peers and I were "like-minded", so school ended up feeling more like an impediment to my education than an enlightening experience.
There are certainly problems with learning on your own, not the least of which is maintaining the drive to push through the icky parts. But in the absence of external motivational structures, you can give your self-discipline a workout. I'm not a particularly disciplined person, but I can still commit to doing 1 hour of math a day. I guess I think of it like my daily mental exercise. It's hard to develop this habit though, and if you can't, school's not a bad option.
One of the other problems with learning math on your own is not having anyone to ask questions. To help with this, I've actively tried to make friends (of sorts) with math professors at a nearby school. I get lunch with one every once in a while, and we talk about sports and life and math. This can kinda substitute for the community of like-minded people that school provides.
All this goes to say is that you have to be aware of how you learn and how you get motivated. If you are externally driven, and don't mind learning at a pace you did not establish, school will be useful to you. If you don't grok extrinsic motivation, school's rough and you should learn on your own.
That's a fair point. A lot of people could probably motivate to do an hour of math a day, just like they could to do an hour of exercise for an hour or practice an instrument. OTOH I would never be independently be able to motivate to do 4-6 hours of math a day, which is where I'm at now.
Actually the instrument analogy is apt--the world class concert musicians you see on Youtube are practicing 5 hours a day. The guy down the hall banging out a Chopin prelude practices one. Both are "good" musicians, but only one is great. It's a question of what you're looking for.
