I have taken several linguistic classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Not enough to be anything near an expert, but enough to know a bit about how languages work. Not enough to feel empowered to create my own languages - until recently.
The last linguistics course I took was History of the German language as part of my master's degree (MAT) in Germanic Studies. My professor, Tracy Hall, had created his own course materials, which I printed and bound at the beginning of the semester, and used for notetaking when we went through them during class.
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And a page or so later:
Clearly, studying the way languages change over time inspired me. Here's why: you can create your own language much more easily by adopting an existing root language than trying to create it out of thin air.
I have read (unfortunately I don't have most of my books with me at present to provide a source) and heard that Tolkien based his languages on real languages. Sindarin famously has roots in Welsh, for example. Examining how changes in phonology occur to split new languages from a parent language showed me how a person could do that - just make linguistic changes that didn't occur in real life, or in a different order to what actually occurred, and suddenly you have the makings of your own unique language based on a common ancestor of the existing languages.
Easier said than done, perhaps, but still. Pretty cool.