Doesn’t the iconic wizard have something about being taken to court and lawyering for himself and getting into education that way?
You were a servant at the wizarding school and picked up stuff from listening to the students.
Your great-aunt Hilda has a very persistent ghost which used to possess you to get stuff done. You couldn't help but learn some, until you escaped from home.
You had a formal education - in archaeology. Studying the remains of the past, those cave paintings/tomb decorations/weird bits of engraved pottery started making sense to you.
Your parent is a curious rogue living in a city originally built by a wizard. They devoted ages to generating a really complete map of the city. The first set of complete plans of an old area of the city drove you screaming into unconsciousness when you saw it. Your parent destroyed the plans, but the eldritch knowledge had forced its way into your mind already.
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You were kidnapped by fey and learned magic from them, collecting their spells in your notebook.
There was a henge of standing stones with weird runes carved into them. You made rubbings and learned the spells that way.
You were a mageslave. Captured by the witch-king, you learned magic or you died.
You were visiting a cabin in the woods. A magical book cursed and haunted the cabin. You alone survived due to your wits.
You worked as a scribe at a monastery. While copying a spellbook, it rubbed off on you, and you secretly made a copy for yourself.
You were a chosen one. Captured by a cult, you learned magic or you died.
You inherited a spellbook and some wealth. You got bored not working, flipped through the spellbook out of boredom, and discovered you had a knack for magic.
You were recruited to be a warmage. You learned magic or you died.
A weird animal started following you around. It eventually taught you the secrets of wizardry.
You come from a family of powerful sorcerers. You are either a bastard or the bloodline is weak in you. You threw yourself into the study of wizardry to prove your worth and your wits.
You come from a superstitious settlement, possibly a minor theocracy. You studied wizardry to subvert your idiot bullies.
You're the runt of the litter. You studied magic to prove your worth to your gang, guild, or kin.
You belong to a powerful family of magical merchants. You studied magic to be the family's enforcer.
You belong to a cabal of gifted craftsfolk. You use magic to make and repair items.
The ghost of a wizard is haunting you. Until you recover all thirteen of her magical tomes, she will continue to haunt you.
You were recruited by the Hidden Guild. You're a child prodigy, and they are training you in the magical arts to make you the perfect spy.
An arcanaloth seeks to use you as his agent in the mortal realms.
You're an orphan rescued from the streets by priests of the god of magic.
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You studied interpretive dance for years, and it just so happened that your dances mimicked many somatic components used by wizards so closely that picking up the rest of the art wasn't that hard.
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You're not a wizard. Strange things happen around you when you read books.
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Took a correspondence course.
Assembled hundreds of fortune cookies into words of power.
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I had a concept where the father was a wizard and the son was only just getting into Alchemy when a fire broke out in their house and the dad couldn't make it out. The kid managed to grab his dad's Spellbook and set about using it to find who set the fire.
He was an Arcane Bomber wizard, the only time I've used that Archetype. Since he was self taught from a probably singed spellbook, four prohibited schools made sense.
You were a lab experiment slash target even moreso than most apprentices. We re gonna need another timmy.
Former familiar
Formermhatrack
Ate a spellbook
Sentient ioun stone stuck up nose
Self taught wizard ina time loop
A hatchling dragons pet
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You were a surgeon who's hands became crippled. You went to a monastery and learned magic to overcome your disability.
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@Doomed Hero:
You win this thread! ;)
You were a bored noble, who picked up magic as kind of a hobby. You viewed it more as a pleasing activity to pass the time and a fitting amusement for a gentleman of your status. That was until a divination went horribly wrong and you made contact with one of the outer gods. Your mind a little cracked you now devote yourself to further studying the mysteries while writing novels and short stories about strange entities and tentacle-faced monsters.
I like the idea of someone who just loved books. As such they spent far too much time in the local library, and found they thoroughly enjoyed the section on the arcane.
It turns out there are all sorts of "How-To" books in the library. Including "How to make friends and influence people, the magical way."
Another option is that a forgetful wizard who had been using a tome on the history of the construction of golems accidentally placed the wrong book back on the shelf, they left their tome of lecture notes from the local college rather than the tome on golems.
Or... while reading a book at a library, you find a mysterious glyph.
Failing your saving throw, you now sign your name Marvelo...
Self taught wizard ina time loop
This is the best.
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You started to spontaneously develop magical powers but because your mind was more logical you managed to intuit your way into figuring out what would work to write down the flashes of insight into magic and became a Wizard instead of your typical Sorcerer.
This is pretty much the canonical way you get Arcanists, just FYI.
A wizard did i.... no, wait. Eh... pixies at the bottom of the garden did it.
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A book just appeared in your toys as a child. It was illegible to any but you and you found it fascinating. As you grew, you realized everyone else seemed to ignore the book and it always turned up. On the day you first cast a cantrip, the book vanished, gone looking for a new student.
This is a thing in my campaign world, a number of 'artifact' primers making magic more common and preventing powerful Wizards from hogging it.
clearly you were a carnival huckster and one day while doing feats of aeronautical daring do your hot air balloon was caught and whisked away by a Kansas twister... and that's how Oscar Zoroaster of Omaha Nebraska became the great and powerful wizard...
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You were a thief who was hired to steal a spell book from a supposedly low level wizard who wasn't. The wizard caught you and turned you into a sexslave (sex/species transformation optional) for his amusement. Eventually you were able to figure out enough magic to escape and are still studying to get stronger in case your master . . . your CAPTOR come's looking for you and no the thought of that is not making you wag your tail blast it.
You got a letter on your 11th birthday informing you were invited to attend the royal academy of wizardry where you spent 7 years learning to be a wizard.
You made a bet with your friend you'd master wizardry in a year or die trying. At the end of the year you were surprised and relieved to discover rather than drying straight away you were no cursed to spend the rest of your life studying magic and trying to become a mythic archmage.
You and a group of friends one drunken night dared each other to break into the wizards tower on the edge of town. Unfortunately they were out which lead to you triggering all sorts of magical items. The twins had their faces swapped to . . . well no real impact on anyone, Trevor is now Tanya and working as a barmaid, Stan was turned into a cat and you? Well you got off lucky and apparently gained some small magical power as you could understand Stan's meowing. You also feel responsible as you vaguely recall being the one who came up with the idea of visiting the tower and since the wizard is of a "clean up your own messes" mentally you've since been studying under them in an attempt to gain enough power to turn Trevor and Stan back. A matter your begining to think might be more complicated that you expected as Tanya seems very happy being courted by a young farmer and you realized you'd kind of bound Stan to you as your familiar.
A bunch of demons ripped you out of another world/reality to conduct an experiment on you (transformations again optional) you were however rescued before they got to the human sacrifice part of the post experiment entertainment. However enough magical power now saturates you your rescuer felt you had to be trained as a wizard/demon bloodline sorcerer/arcanist.
You were exploring the hills near your home town when you stumbled across a tomb containing an attractive woman with little more on that jewelry. When you tried to take just a few pieces you somehow got turned into her. Now you have enough raw magical strength you had to be trained as a wizard plus it was your best chance to change back as you couldn't afford the cost of finding out who could cast the powerful spells needed to change back much less the spells themselves.