Finishing a Year of College in 10 Weeks
medium.comInteresting idea. I think the #1 issue with this approach is the time it takes for our minds to "adapt" to some of these problems. Especially with trickier computer science and mathematical concepts it often takes hours or days to suss out an answer to a problem.
(e.g. I had a professor in college who would assign four problems for homework. I would have to work on each problem for some hours, take a walk, eat dinner, work on the problem some more, take another walk, sleep a night, and the next morning I would have the answer. Then I would move on to the next problem.)
Additionally, it often took me some time to fully grok a concept. Perhaps Mark is intelligent enough that he'll be able to pick up everything as it comes, but a lot of the concepts in computer science build on each other. It took me about three weeks to get my mind around object-oriented programming when I first learned it in high school.
I'm excited to see how this experiment goes and I wish Mark the best of luck. But I'll be amazed if he picks up two weeks worth of CS in a day without giving those concepts time to sink in.
Mark here, thanks for the comments! I think my best bet on that front is to switch gears if I get stuck on a problem. So long as I'm able to make headway on some of the material at a given moment, then I should be able to keep pace. I suspect the basics electronics and statistics courses will save me on that front.
When it comes to grokking difficult concepts, I can often grasp an idea at a basic level rather quickly, but it can take me up to months before I'm able to realize all the implications of it. Also, I've noticed the rate at which I grasp things is very dependent on how well it's taught. If a concept is taught well I can leverage it very quickly, but if I have to spend hours disentangling a concept I often don't end up able to leverage it until months later when my subconscious has had time to make sense of the idea.
Hi Mark, how are you going to pull this off while going to school full time? Or are you taking some leave as well?