Learn By Doing It
The best way to learn something is by actually doing it. The knowledge gained by completing a task is far more valuable than any other method of learning. Education gained from texts help you understand an experience, but, doesn’t grant you the actual experience.
That’s what I’d advise college students to do, rather than trying to learn about “entrepreneurship.” “Entrepreneurship” is something you learn best by doing it. The examples of the most successful founders make that clear. What you should be spending your time on in college is ratcheting yourself into the future. College is an incomparable opportunity to do that. What a waste to sacrifice an opportunity to solve the hard part of starting a startup - becoming the sort of person who can have organic startup ideas - by spending time learning about the easy part. Especially since you won’t even really learn about it, any more than you’d learn about sex in a class. All you’ll learn is the words for things.
Playing Dungeons & Dragons gives your character experience points for fighting different monsters. However, if you fought the monsters in real life, you wouldn’t be prepared for it. Your character has the real experience while you gained education around the experience. You can read as much as you want about what others have done or are doing but you won’t learn anything until you do it.
Living the experience is where you gain knowledge. Whether you succeed or fail, as long as you analyze the experience, knowledge can be gained. When you took a test in school and got every answer right except one, you always remember the answer to the incorrect question. This is the knowledge (experience) you gained from taking the test.
Procedural knowledge is directly gained when completing a task. Vocational education teach students using procedural knowledge through hands-on training. By doing a task, the students learn.
Our current education system teaches through procedural knowledge. When you are in school, you read a section in a book, go to a lecture about the section, maybe have a lab exercise on the section, and then you are tested on the information presented in that section.
The lab is given to help bring a physical element to your learning. You can read as much as you want about a subject, but until you actually do it, you won’t learn anything. The whole purpose of school is to study, remember, and apply ideas. Isn’t this what we do our entire lives?
Cal Poly’s motto is Discere Faciendo. Learn by doing. But most people won’t ever learn through doing. Most people are content to live a life of leisure. Great achievements are only made by those who do things.