Self taught or not?

Are any of you guys self taught? I was considering Westlawn, but as we are going sailing for a year or so, right now it's a bad idea. Both financially and due to lack of time. I guess I'll try to get started on my own. So, is anyone here completely self taught?

/Hampus

 

All of us!*


We otherwise would have a proper job and no time to doodle around here!







*except the unemployed, they once have learned something.

 

Hampus,
I was in a similar situation, where I started the CADD program with YDS, as a precursor to the yacht design course. I decided that I wouldn't have time to work on my course and sail to Asia, at the same time. Then I thought, "why not?" The trip is important to me, as is the course, so I have decided to achieve both, simultaneously. YDS does not have a completion time deadline and there is a large reading component to the course, great for those long watches & when I'm anchored in a bay. The value of doing the course, rather than going it alone, is the support, suggestions & advice gained from the instructors. The assignments are formulated on Rhino & submitted over the internet, so I can send them from anywhere I get a wi-fi signal.
Best of luck in your decision.
Mike

 

Yeppp!

 

Every successful designer I've met that attempted to self learn what was necessary, eventually ended up in a course, myself included.

 

There are a few fields where self-learning is still very possible, e.g. mathematics, programming, and even theoretical fluid dynamics. I did it, but I was also lucky to have two exceptional colleagues who I could call on when I was stuck.

However, if you are thinking of getting into actual boat design, with all its interacting engineering systems, legal regulations, and real-world consequences, you would be silly to not enrol in a formal course.

Ernest Hemmingway said that the best thing a writer can have is an editor who is a constant, infallible ******** filter. You have a better chance of finding something similar in a good course instead of relying on your own self-assessment

Best of luck in whatever you choose!
Leo.

 

I agree with PAR and Leo. Do a course and make the lecturers work for their money by bothering them with questions.

 

The dilemma you're facing is a case of "You get what you pay for" I suspect. There's nothing preventing an individual from learning the necessary skills for designing certain types of vessels by reading and asking questions and studying successful designs and by their own trial and error. But by being involved in some sort of organized, structured curriculum with mentors you will dramatically decrease the number of mistakes you have to make (and the time it takes to make and learn from them) and probably in the end make you a better designer. You will, no doubt, be told of the designers who produce perfectly adequate, and even some exceptional, boat designs who are self taught, at least predominantly. But it's most likely that that structured curriculum was replaced by access to a mentor, teacher or just a very generous and pedogogical colleague.
If you haven't already read a few books, then you want to do that before making your mind up one way or another. There are lots of threads on this forum addressing recommended reading for aspiring designers. But keep your mind open, whichever decision you make.

 

What Do You Want To Do...

Hello...

Want to work in an office - be warm in the winter - be cool in the summer - ALWAYS DRY - keep your lunch in a real fridge and perhaps meet your future professional wife or girlfriend - then you should suck it up NOW and pay for 4 years of undergrad Mechanical Engineering and then 2 years of Naval Architecture - that piece of paper cost you six years of your life - but no one can argue your credentials - you can buy lots of insurance - you can practise in many fields - oil and gas - any commercial shipping including cruise ship and recreation - semi submersible - ocean cables - bridge work and tunnel - consultant - any damn thing you can think of...

This is what you get - YOUR NAME - then the license to also suffix same as - N.Arch, P.Eng...

Or you can be a 'schlep' - that went half way and completed nothing and be judged for same - for the rest of your working and personal life...

Have I made myself clear - I can be vague...

SH.

 

SH,
The message you're sending is, indeed, loud and clear. And, by the way, arrogant beyond description and completely missing the point of the question to boot. He/she did not ask about whether he should spend the four, five or six years to become degreed or not. The inference can safely be made that he's debating whether to enroll in a design course or not in order to design vessels which a graduate of the program could undertake and complete in a professional manner and which were safe, adhered to standards and performed well. This does not, at least for the rest of us, take 6 years to learn how to do. In fact, it took me four years to get my engineering degree and then decide that yacht design was better taught by yacht designers and not by Professor Sliderule.
I was gonna stop there, but you really got my hackles up. Your characterization of a non-NA degreed designer designing boats as a "schlep" is where your arrogance really shines. As a side note, though, you should familiarize yourself with the meaning of words you use when you attempt to insult someone with them. It's really poor form otherwise. "Schlep" has little to do with going half way and completing nothing. It's to do with trudging slowly and laboriously. But your insult was decipherable nonetheless. So, back to your poorly worded rudeness. His personal life? Really? From what elevated status are you entitled to judge someone's personal life and all that it encompasses based upon his chosen route to a vocation he obviously has an affinity for and may end up being a damn site better at than you? Any non-degreed designers out there wanna chime in on this one? This guy is judging himself as better personally than you because you don't have a degree. He also thinks you've accomplished nothing. I guess he's never been on a boat which didn't have a big "P.Eng." stamp on its *** to prove it was officially a boat worthy of his presence upon it.
SH, your problem is not that you can be vague. I've already explained to you what appears to be one of your biggest problems. Additionally, though, your myopic perception of what's required in order to work in an air conditioned office where you can hit on your equally fantastically qualified and obviously superior-in-every-way co-workers has nothing to do with being a (and forgive my own over-simplification here) "boat guy". I do, but don't want to, work in an office. I want to be out on a boat. I want to have salt spray in my face. I want to get rained on, because rain comes with seas and wind and the other things that it takes to prove that the boat I designed doesn't need a P.Eng. on its ***.

 

Er... I don't want to raise any hackles here, but there is probably no technical field where you don't benefit a lot from formal training. That certainly includes programming. You can learn a lot from reading books, and experience can make you proficient at getting a program to work, but there is a lot more to engineering a software application than just getting it to work. Many self-taught programmers never learn these things (on the other hand, many college-trained programmers never learn them either ...).

 

I gave up on 'self taught' and signed into a course at the local Community college.
Two days a week in the mornings. Not particularly to design boats, but its gonna be handy when asking questions. Sorta like talking with your hands
without all the waving around and knocking things off the table!

 

Gee Scott...

Hello...
All I can offer you is - I am sorry - looks like I have hit upon a nagging nerve in your life...
You sure can type though - there is a lot of money to be made in technical scripting...
A kid offers up a question - a half measure - or how to go professional - I made a gesture for the pro. - if it can be afforded...
You and your personal bits against me - mean **** to me - so go piss into your own wind...
It all depends on what you want to do and why you want to do it - if you want to raise a family designing boats then you should really consider a P.Eng degree or other - unless you can swoon Tiger Woods soon to be ex...
Every one has to 'pay the man' at some point in their lives - better to pay it to yourself...
See this - http://www.ral.ca/employment.html - call me a prick or an arrogant whatever - this is your bottom line...
ROMANCE IS FOR WRITERS OF NOVELS...
At the end of the day - if you ain't got it - you go get it - or you go sweat and bleed in the shipyards and shut the **** up...
Scott - please review to me what you have explained to everyone - tell me how to better myself...
WE GOT ONE ON NOW BOYS...
SH.

 

I agree with you 99%, Dave.

There are some exceptional people who achieved great things without formal qualis - e.g. Ramanujan in maths, and the architect Mies van der Rohe. But they are very rare.

My first experience with a formal programming course was to use punched cards. Stuff that for a game of soldiers, I thought. I had a beefy 8k computer at home on which I could use assembly language, so I dropped out.

About 15 years later I enrolled at a Uni but they were committed to teaching everything using Ada. Same game of soldiers, so I dropped out. I preferred to stay at home on a PC and use assembler, Fortran and Pascal.

It's also easy to get a post-grad without a formal course at a recognised University. It was recently found that 220 out of 230 Masters theses at the Uni. of New England in Australia were plagiarised. Students who were barely able to speak English just copied and pasted stuff from The Guardian and other newspapers. Instant Masters. The Uni found out, tried to cover it up, threatened the whistleblower, and the results still stand to this day.

Cheers,
Leo.

 

Nope, SH, we don't "got one on now boys". You're not worth, it. Personally. You've demonstrated this through your unprofessional and disrespectful attitude and remarks. You degrade the overall level of professionalism and quality of this forum with your disparaging, irrelevant and less-than-illuminating statements, and I'll not become mired in your petty attacks and abuses. You have and clearly are willing to spew your opinions. The fact that I have allowed you to bait me into this response just demonstrates the power of low level thinking. I'll not let it happen again.