Reading and understanding difficult material I am not an university graduate but I have a passion for learning. I want to learn computer science and I keep on searching some good reference material. Recently I found some lecture notes on TOC of a well known teacher although he has explained things in detail but I am having hard time to grasp the material. One of the reason being is that they assume that you have a good mathematical foundation and other is you have the TA and professor to help when needed.

Now, for the first reason I have a good mathematical background but sometimes it may not suffice to the expectation. Second, I am a self learner hence I don't have the luxury to clear my doubts and ask questions.

What I am doing is try to study the material normally 2-3 pages and re-read it until it makes sense or I get frustrated, next day I try to feel positive and try again, I am making progress but it feels slow.

The questions are:


I will be able to change my brain's wiring by such constant effort?
How to judge that I know the material? by doing exercises? but I don't have solution?
How to be motivated in such situations?
Definetly yes! Even if you feel frustrated at the beginning, thinking and learning about a topic has an impact on your brain. See for example Robert Greenes book "Mastery" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_(book)), where he describes the lives of various geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci and Charles Darwin. They all spent a lot of time becoming masters of their field.
Theoretical Computer Science is a very abstrct topic. I would recomend you to participate in some online class. See https://www.coursera.org/courses?languages=en&amp;query=computer+science for example. There you can do excercises that get peer reviewed by others. So you know if you did well or not.
Increase you motivation by:


Learning in groups like on Coursera.
Setting clear goals. What do you want to achieve? Get a better job? Write it down. Hang it on the wall.
Taking small steps. If you take steps that are too big, you might feel overwhelmed.