Learning vs studying ...

I have a weird feeling that I had written something similar in the past too ... not sure if I have posted it here.

One of the things I have noticed is that, when I was expected to study something : be it courses at school/college, or elsewhere, my motivation for doing it was substantially lower ... and at times, even for subjects I would otherwise like and enjoy !
On the flip side, I have and continue to, spend a huge amount of time trying to learn things which interest me - read & re-read a large number of articles, discussions and even books; ditto with code.

Now, one of the things I tend to slightly regret is my decision not to take computer science at college (not getting into the embarrassing reason why) ... but in retrospect, keeping in mind my past record with my 'studying' things, was it a blessing in disguise ?
Like most of my friends at college, I did spend quite a bit of time at the computer science learning things which interested me - to the point of possibly flunking my regular electronics courses (there were quite a lot of near misses !) - but I wonder if I would have had the same amount of interest & enthusiasm if I had to do it as part of some course or knew I would need to do it eventually, will I still continue to learn things in related subjects even now ....

/me wonders ....


In other news :
Work going great ! Learning lots, and working on some cool stuff :-) Have a yahoo research page here ... yet to add anything there though :-P
Bought an xbox360 after Sood's glowing feedback ;-) And having tonnes of fun with it - wish Ajay was around ...

Currently reading :
Practical Common Lisp
Producing Open Source Software