About
Hi, my name is Liz, and I’m taking a year off before college — a gap year, as you lovable Brits say. Why? No, not to go partying every night. No, not to teach ceramics to orphaned, physically disabled Inuit children in Tanzania. I took a break from school to learn more!
Sounds crazy, I know, but I’m an autodidact; I love self-education as much as I hate school. The only problem is I’ve never been able to choose a single hobby to pursue. With a billion and one things to learn, how can I decide? Well, with all this free time (and no life), I don’t have to. I’ll simply learn everything! Using the oh-so-wonderful internet, I’m going find every free resource that exists — and a few that don’t.
Can I actually learn everything for free?
This blog will answer that question. I’m going to teach what I learn while I learn it, tracking my progress step-by-step as I discover what works and what doesn’t. Yup, folks, I’m in for the long haul. I’ll update this blog at least once a week, and I plan to continue long after my gap year ends — during college, after college, maybe even forever!
After all, that is how long it’ll take to learn everything.
November 21st, 2006
Liz,
I look forward to watching your journey. Self education is probably the most important life skill we never teach on college campuses. You’re going to be faced with situations each and every day where you have to figure out “how do I do that” - and use the tools and resources you have at your disposal to try to figure out the answer. I wish you the best of luck in your quest to learn everything, and hope that at the minimum you learn something new (and practical) every single day.
November 21st, 2006
I just ate a gopher.
November 27th, 2006
I’m worried about those disable inuit orphans in Tanzania. But as much as they need you, I want to see these projects continue.
December 24th, 2006
Liz, Len told me about your Blog site. Nice job. I’ll check it out from time to time. I’ve spent my working carrer introducing new products and technology. I’ve had to teach myself all of the new technology that has been developed after my college degree. I admire you getting off to a self taught lifetime education.
December 27th, 2006
As one who has been loving the educational ride on the slope of computers and the web since the the early 1970’s … and is now known as the Northstar Nerd today … I wish the Learning / Programming Nerd the best of luck. You first assignment … discover the Latin word for nerd!
January 12th, 2007
Kudos to you!
I wish I tracked everything I learned, since I forgot most of it already!
Really, this is a great idea, and I look forward to seeing your progress…
February 8th, 2007
Awesome. I will gladly reap the rewards of your hard work by watching videos with all your tips and tricks
February 8th, 2007
Well, thats energy!! I really like the part where you say “I’m going to teach what I learn while I learn it”… this is a good learning practise
February 9th, 2007
The LearningNerd it is an excellent place to learn.
Liz continues with your work is very good, does not give up. The construction this well done one, and its very easy navigation. I find that only search of information in yours lacks to add a research/seatch blog.
February 13th, 2007
Maybe you could give us some hints on how to make such good vídeos… it would be great
February 14th, 2007
Hi Liz,
First of all let me tell you that you are a very cute nerd. In regards to your site, I think it is an excellent idea and please don’t give up on it. I love the fact that you are working on PHP as one of your topics. Learning is a life long mission, only a few people in this world understand the excitement it brings. Those who take the time to read manuals hold the answers for those who hit their head against the wall wondering why something doesn’t work.
Happy Valentine’s Day,
Sam
February 19th, 2007
Hi,
Appreciate your spirit and i wish you all the best, even as i learn from what you learnt..
-raj
February 24th, 2007
Hi! I stumbled upon your site as I was searching resources for learning English on the web. This writing of yours amazed me because it might as well have been me writing that. I feel exactly the same as you. I too love learning. I also am interested in many different things and until now I have hated it that I can`t pick only one thing that I´d want to concentrate on the most. I was jealous of people that could do that. Instead I`d want to learn number of things such as programming, to play the guitar, to write well, webdesigning, photographing, knitting, many languages etc. Anyway, I want to wish you luck with your self-education! This writing inspired me to learn more and enjoy the learning process. Thank you for that!
March 11th, 2007
Best of luck Liz, in your Sisyphic quest. By the way, did you know there are 100,000 books published every year in the US alone? http://youtube.com/watch?v=3XqQYfe2LUg
Hope it takes you less than one year to figure out what you want to settle on learning. Oh and please don’t waste time with PHP: http://tnx.nl/php
March 20th, 2007
Beautiful work done. Overall the site is well set-up and greatly educational. I have the same philosophy and have practically learned everything in life by myself.
Good luck to you
pygmalion
April 17th, 2007
Sexy and smart. I wish you the best of luck. you have great enthusiasm, a great smile and a great site.. keep it up.
April 23rd, 2007
Nice, I’ve always liked learning on my own as well. If your goal is to learn everything, you might as well start by memorizing wikipedia
j/k I know you don’t have to memorize necessarily to learn.
May 10th, 2007
Nice going Liz.
Hope you learn a lot in this mission.
You have my support.
Cheers from Portugal!
P.S.: A party now and then doesn’t hurt your brain. Have fun!
June 17th, 2007
This seems nice!
however, u shouldn’t get in your own videos. as this seems to be a geek site, some ppl may find your mouth moving a sexual thing - but not me -
GEEKS FTW!! MUAHAH
great iniciative woman, keep it going! oh, and your voice is nice - kinda tired of geeks (gay)voices on tutorial videos
July 25th, 2007
Hei Liz.
What a wonderful nerd you are! Just stumbled on your blog through the old site. Keep nerding, we will keep learning with you. Rii
August 18th, 2007
Thanks for your nice tutorials….!!
You’ve been….
yeah…
….you’ve been
BookMarked NoW !
December 20th, 2007
Hey Liz,
Has it been a year since your gap year started? What’s next for you? Are you headed to college in 2008?
December 21st, 2007
Voices — Haha, thank you for reminding me I have to update my about page. Yup, my gap year has unfortunately come to an end. I started college this fall. Oh well… at least I have winter break.
As for what’s next, I have absolutely no idea. But I can’t wait to find out.
December 30th, 2007
hey we met a long time ago i was going into the marines remember your allways off line email me some time
March 4th, 2008
That sounds like an awesome experiment and I cannot begin to tell you how jealous I am of you! I’m currently slogging through Uni and all I can think about is taking a gap year so I can learn a bit of everything, not just what the institutions want to shove down my throat.
ps. Love the logo as well! It’s very clever.
March 20th, 2008
You rock!
March 22nd, 2008
Hi Liz,
Gotta love that style!
Sharing your bane for interest in everything…college is for people who need structure to learn. If you are graced with a penchant for learning without it; save yourself a lot of cash; and continue on your life long pursuit. Class never really ends anyway.
Cheers, gal!
gg
March 24th, 2008
Hello Liz,
I really appreciate you blogging and sharing all your wisdom and knowledge. I too have an “interest” in just learning odd bits and pieces (mostly science related).
I’m going through a crucial part of my academic life right now but you’ve inspired me to maybe put up a similar thing as share my knowledge with everyone.
Keep doing what you are doing!
You’re freakin’ awesome.
June 1st, 2008
This is so adorable.
I hope you never complete your quest to learn everything! I pray you never have to endure the real-world equivalent of the MMO endgame, where there is nothing left to see or do. You’d be so bored :\
In the meantime, here’s to a great ideal.
July 3rd, 2008
I found your site via blogging idol. Good luck to you in the contest and in your gap year. What an opportunity to explore what the world has to offer.
July 10th, 2008
Hi Liz,
nice site and nice videos as well, i’m learning some PHP/MySQL at this time cose of my job (i’m into redesigning my company’s site). Last year i learnt xhtml+css and i really love it.
I’d be really pleased whatever i may help you.
Greetings from Spain.
Rod
November 6th, 2008
I taught myself some html awhile back…right after high school. I was looking to create something more dynamic and decided to try and learn php. I was almost deterred and then I found your site. It was so helpful to learn it as you were learning it. You ran into the same mistakes I did.
Currently, I’ve been able to create and edit php pages as I’ve needed to with the resources you provided…and google. Thank you for posting this and I hope all is well.
February 6th, 2009
Holy crap
You sure your a nerd? Beautiful voice.
Got any pictures of yourself?
April 14th, 2009
Hi!! I’ve just found your site yesterday, and let me say something, I think your idea of learning about all kinds of topics is great, right now Im kindda in the same situation, picking books from different languages from time 2 time, Ruby, Java, Python, C# and new technologies as Linux, WPF, AJAX.
I have one question though, what career are u goin to study? Cause by the looks of this blog, I could suppose is something IT related, right?
Well! Keep it up! I’ll sure gonna keep an eye on your site Greetings from Mexico
June 11th, 2009
Wow, I wannna be just like you!…lol
Just Subscribed.
Good Luck.
August 28th, 2009
Funny, I have the same goal as you but I am much younger.
In fact, I have a blog about learning effectively which tries to help people learn various topics (which I have learned/experienced myself) more naturally and holistically.
Good luck to both of us on our journey~
September 7th, 2009
God, you are so damn cute. You’ve got another regular reader as from now.
September 11th, 2009
Hi! I came across your blog and I simply love it!
I wish you the best in your learning journey!
September 15th, 2009
I just found this delight of a site and I am quite interested! I will be following closely.
P.S I can’t wait until you start the biomedical research
September 16th, 2009
This is kind of sad. No one has noticed that she quit posting. I haven’t seen anything new on this site since I viewed this last year (and anytime I got an email reminder).
This was the perfect way to learn php when I was curious about it. Now, I’m installing/administrating sites that run heavily on php. I’ve written modules for our forums and even a couple stand-alone pages. I also started doing some webhosting/design on the side and use this as my main language to code in.
Just wanted to express my thanks for having this page, and I’m sure all here would agree that you should refresh this site and get back into it. Hope all is well and that your college years were good.
Mike.
November 23rd, 2009
Wow, Liz - you’re so brave! I’m currently reading on your lessons on PHP/MySQL. How often do you learn a new topic and how fast do you master it? Thanks for the good work!
I’m a 3rd year College Student in the U.S.
January 4th, 2010
Ok I just want to start with this, If having someone be inspired by you is on your list, check it off. Looking at your blog…its a perfect picture of what I want to do! Im only 13 years old atm…but i guess you could say I’m a ‘kid genius’. I’ve currently embarked on a similar quest. If you get this, and I hope you do,I just want to say Gratz…you nailed it!
~Ben