I sort of stumbled into it.
I applied to join a Graphics course, but they wouldn't accept me as I hadn't taken art to A level.
So I had to take a year out and complete that course. As it was only one day a week I needed to fill the other days, so also chose History of Art and Photography. Bought a SH Minolta X500 and started taking shots. Most of the course seemed to revolve around darkroom processing, rather than image taking and most of the stuff I learned, I quickly forgot once the course was completed. That was in 1992.
Didn't really get the 'bug' for photography till many years later, when I bought my first digital camera in 2003. (Pentax Optio 550.) this allowed for far more instantaneous results, but I wish I knew more back then. That camersa would take RAW shots, but I din't know anything about PP. In fact, I didn't even own a PC at home in those days, so stored everything on my computer at work. Even though I'd finally gone 'digital', back then you were still fairly limited to how many shots you could take as memory cards were very small and very expensive. I think it was about £1 per MB. For a trip to the states, I bought one 64MB SD card and it was almost £70. I also bought a Belkin device that attached to an iPod and transferred the images to the iPod. As otherwise the memory card was full after about 30 images or so.
Went through a succession of Panasonic Lumix cameras that didn't further the bug. If anything, they were massively disappointing.
Then for my 40th birthday, I got my first DSLR - a Canon 600D. And that's really when the bug properly took hold.
In some ways I'm lucky in that I work with a lot of world class photographers, but in other ways, it's hard to learn much from them by discussing stuff, more a case of seeing what they do on shoots.
I'm torn on whether learning in 'the old days' is better or worse.
While I agree that it's definitely cheaper to learn with a modern DSLR compared to a film camera, the very fact that film and processing were expensive meant you were forced into considering your settings a little more and attempt to get it right first time. Every image had a physical cost to it.
The problem with that is that unless you had the disposable income, I guess you'd default to the things you know would work, rather than experiment in the same way as a digital camera allows.
Horses for courses.
I do think learning the technical aspect is massively important though. I can take quite nice images if the conditions are right. But I know next to nothing about lighting a scene or how to cope when conditions aren't right. It's a constant learning process for someone like me and I regularly find myself making the most amateur of mistakes.
Last time I went out with my camera, for instance, I managed to somehow have the ISO set to 1600 on a fairly bright day, while outdoors.