I'm an autodidact too--I was lucky enough to find this big group of mentors who were willing to speak to me several times a week about a variety of subjects. Then, after a few years, they all agreed that I now knew a lot of things and gave me a piece of paper saying so.

Yes - the article argues autodidacts become "students," and must accept that a student can't autodidact. Or they fail.

This is not some strawman I want to knock down. From the article:

"...there is more to being a good student than being good at learning. One of the responsibilities of a good student is to seek out excellent teachers. In the Wikipedia article on Autodidacticism, I find this paragraph:

"Autodidactism is only one facet of learning, and is usually complemented by learning in formal and informal spaces: from classrooms to other social settings. Many autodidacts seek instruction and guidance from experts, friends, teachers, parents, siblings, and community."

He misses the second sentence of his Wikipedia quote. He argues that you must sometimes become the student.

Any excellent student knows he must eventually teach from his corpus of knowledge to cement what he knows, and pit it against new, hungry students.

Even I - the autodidact - knew to communicate what I learned, test it in the "field of battle," wherever I could find that.

For me, it was all before I reached "higher education." So by the time I had professors, classmates, and TA's, I had already developed a highly effective method of autodidactism.