19 February 2016

What Do I Want To Learn?

<Shakes fist in the direction of Indiana>

I don't know what I want to learn and I don't know what I don't know.

Who teaches THAT class?

Sitting here and marveling that I'd never thought to ask, "what do I want to learn?"

Formal education has always had the "get a degree" or "get a certification/license" as a goal rather than to learn any specific thing, and you learned everything thrown at you because required for degree.

Things that I've learned with an applied goal have typically surrounded a "well shit, that's broke" and a need to repair it.  I autodidact readily and am a fair mechanic because of it.

What do I want from a gun class?

I do know that I don't want to spend a lot of money "learning" what I already know just to gain access to classes that teach something I don't.

6 comments:

  1. I guess what I mean is are you interested in a pure shooting class? One gun only, or maybe a combination of handgun and long gun? Do you want one that's focused on concealed carry? Legal issues? Heavy on moving and shooting?

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  2. ...and don't forget Craig Douglas's epic line: "Personally I think that if a man is naked and is standing in a locked room with ten other naked men, and can't keep at least half of them from raping him, then the last thing he needs is a carbine course."

    https://pistol-forum.com/showthread.php?1423-Warning-Extreme-shooting-elitism-inside&p=22876&viewfull=1#post22876

    His ECQC class is high on my list of Must Take classes this year.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Until I can answer that question I'm going to be mum about training classes, I think.

    About the only thing is certain is that I definitely don't want to pay someone to teach me something I already know, and I've not found a certain method to determine if the teacher is selling me that or not.

    I started over three damn times with karate/taekwondo because there's no transfer credits between dojos. It's made me intolerant of the idea that the only way someone can learn is from zero and THEIR way. Especially when it becomes obvious that the only differences are the languages the kata are taught in. One time was JUST to get enough advancement to move over to the kenjutsu classes I wanted to take. Literally repeating all of white to green belt just to gain access to what I wanted to learn.

    I admit it's a character flaw. Even if I manage to suck it up, I end up in a situation where I zone out as they're teaching review material and miss the transition to new stuff then am lost and behind.

    On the plus side, I do tend to accept when I'm wrong and make corrections when shown. (Unless I'm wrong about that too?)

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  4. I can't even relate what you're saying to any firearms classes I've taken. :(

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    Replies
    1. That's prolly good. That likely means that any schooling I take will be something that will learn me something and keep me entertained if not interested.

      The three carbine classes I did take weren't very informative and don't sound like anything else anyone's taken. And they were all taken because a friend bet me ammo and class enrollment fees that my guns wouldn't survive the round count, so that was the real goal rather than "this class offers". All three places appear to be out of business today too!

      I looked at Mr Ayoob's web page and his class offerings. $400 admission, plus travel, lodging and board to even the Florida classes is not a casual expenditure for me. And that's for just the first 20 level class that's got not ammo expenditure. I get real timid asking Harvey for like $700 of her hard earned when _I_ can't explain why I want to learn what's taught or even really explain WHAT is being taught.

      Delete
  5. You can take MAG-40 without taking (either) MAG-20. The shooting portion will not likely be challenging to you if you are fairly certain you can shoot a 300/300 on the qual course. (I did, both times, and so did three or four other students in the class.)

    MAG-40 (or at least the classroom portion of MAG-20) is a good thing to have on one's resume should one ever wind up in the unfortunate circumstances of having to zap somebody.

    As far as the learning new stuff goes...

    I'm a believer in frequent "Level 1" course if at all possible because it's a chance to run my gear from the holster with somebody else watching to check my shit and make sure I haven't sprouted any bad habits.

    I guess I'll fall back on what I've said before: If my mom came to me and said that she was going to take one gun school class, although she wasn't going to become a shooter and likely would never practice again, I'd send her to MAG-40.

    John Murphy of FPF Training has an equally awesome program of two back-to-back one-day classes, but I think he only does it at his home range in Virginia.

    ReplyDelete

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