Aight, guess I'll write about that whole @MarkRober class mess.
Honestly $249 for dubious at best "how to be an engineer" is not a winning move when you can learn the real craft for free or a kite string budget on your own and spin up a basic lab for that cost. 1/?

I'm not some joe public saying this either, as someone who taught himself the craft and learned it via mentors and driveby advice in the common areas of hackerspaces and twitter while on a kite string budget for YEARS AND YEARS, I learned FAR more just futzin around 2/?

than any class I've taken so far. $250 if spent right can get you a DAMN good starter lab with not totally crappy tools that can be used for a ton of other stuff so even if you don't stick with it, you at least have new capabilites and equipment 3/?

Most of what I know and how I approach problems is derived from literally decades of ripping things apart, figuring out how they work and getting into the minds of the engineers that made it. Learn by immersion, ripping apart junk and reversing it is free! 4/?

Bonus round about the junk: You can salvage pretty awesome parts for projects out of said junk that challenges your skills and knowledge to use effectively, forcing you to continue to evolve and expand from where you are. This self driven evolution is quiet but powerful 5/?

I get a LOT of DMs and emails asking me "How do I be like you" or "How did you learn all that", and more or less I tell them almost to a T that it's just a fire of curiosity that led me to ripping apart everything around the house and figuring out how things work... 6/?

... that then led into me combining bits and pieces of knowledge gleaned from that to create things and later evolved into my own knowledge and experience leading my design processes. No classes taught me this and from what I hear from my friends, college is not like that 7/?

My advice to anyone looking to learn how to be an engineer?
Go to the junkyard, trash heap, thrift store and get stuff, RIP IT APART, figure out how it works and salvage cool parts.
Start just tinkering around with combining things, mash stuff together that kinda works 8/?

watch HOW things fail, then fix those specific problems and ITERATE. Write down ideas, sketch out things, prototype in cardboard and hot glue, you don't NEED a printer. JUST GET IN THERE AND GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY. Immersion learning is massively underrated and under the radar 9/?

Oh and write about what you do, the process of going from thoughts, to idea on paper, to designs, then test builds, notes on what worked or not, to final builds is something that's often glossed over but is INCREDIBLY useful to your path, to look back on but also as exp 10/?

in the real world of engineering, documentation is KEY and every engineer loves to see process of developmental evolution in a project, it's addicting reading and being able to get into the brain of another engineer while also picking up bits or of interesting techniques 11/?

Aight this is getting long.
Summing up; don't need to spend hundreds to learn "the spirit of engineering", go to your hackerspace and learn there, a membership there will pay off FAR FAR FAR more than a single class from a youtuber.
Go goof around with junk, it's great! 12/?

Write down ideas and document as you go, it pays off.
Hang out at the hackerspace and work on things in the lobby, drive by advice and meeting people is HUGELY helpful, most won't even need memberships to just hang out during public hours. 13/?

Yeah it'll suck a bit stumbling around in the dark but you slowly pick up bits and pieces of information and figuring out HOW and WHY things work is the best way to gain grok of it.
Get yourself out there and get crackin! 13/?

Site note: The amount of engineers I've seen from %lauded institution% that stall out when thrown a curveball problem is WILD, then the dude who's futzed around with stuff can just look at it and say "yeah nah, this does that and whammo bammo", boom back on track and working.

Side note 2: Your engineering sense is DEEPLY personal and evolves from you DOING things, not being told didactically "hur hur here's how you do it", sure some of it may form points, but what forms the substance is slowly grown to fill in that skeleton as you gain experience.

Bonus round: Learning to do things via tinkering and on a kitestring budget means you know how to solve problems or build things for DRASTICALLY cheaper.
This is a HUGE part of why I am where I am and doing what I do, saving the government money lol.