As a mature aged uni student, I found research & essay drafting enormously difficult.
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As a mature aged uni student, I found research & essay drafting enormously difficult. Now I realise this is because I used a bottom up approach. I would read very widely, taking copious notes, and struggle not to get lost in a sea of information & the interpretations of various historians. But I persisted. Eventually I would end up with a horribly rough draft that was 10 times longer than the word limit. Then I would laboriously work through this, striking out sections that were interesting background, & would be considered relevant & useful in a much longer essay, but were insufficiently relevant in a short essay.
In the process, I would, of course, gain a thorough understanding of the topic/issue & its context. And, I ended up with an essay that was either very good, or excellent. (In History essays. I struggled to excel in politics, merely doing very well.)
I eventually learned how to plan & write using a top down approach. When a shortage of time & energy threatened, &/or I was less than enormously interested in the topic, I would do a little reading, and then map out an essay plan, which would then guide what I read and what notes I made. This approach resulted in very good, solid essays.
But my best work was always something that grew out of a broad base of knowledge & understanding, and took much time & effort to produce.
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As a mature aged uni student, I found research & essay drafting enormously difficult. Now I realise this is because I used a bottom up approach. I would read very widely, taking copious notes, and struggle not to get lost in a sea of information & the interpretations of various historians. But I persisted. Eventually I would end up with a horribly rough draft that was 10 times longer than the word limit. Then I would laboriously work through this, striking out sections that were interesting background, & would be considered relevant & useful in a much longer essay, but were insufficiently relevant in a short essay.
In the process, I would, of course, gain a thorough understanding of the topic/issue & its context. And, I ended up with an essay that was either very good, or excellent. (In History essays. I struggled to excel in politics, merely doing very well.)
I eventually learned how to plan & write using a top down approach. When a shortage of time & energy threatened, &/or I was less than enormously interested in the topic, I would do a little reading, and then map out an essay plan, which would then guide what I read and what notes I made. This approach resulted in very good, solid essays.
But my best work was always something that grew out of a broad base of knowledge & understanding, and took much time & effort to produce.
@Susan60 Sounds like a wonderful way to learn.
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As a mature aged uni student, I found research & essay drafting enormously difficult. Now I realise this is because I used a bottom up approach. I would read very widely, taking copious notes, and struggle not to get lost in a sea of information & the interpretations of various historians. But I persisted. Eventually I would end up with a horribly rough draft that was 10 times longer than the word limit. Then I would laboriously work through this, striking out sections that were interesting background, & would be considered relevant & useful in a much longer essay, but were insufficiently relevant in a short essay.
In the process, I would, of course, gain a thorough understanding of the topic/issue & its context. And, I ended up with an essay that was either very good, or excellent. (In History essays. I struggled to excel in politics, merely doing very well.)
I eventually learned how to plan & write using a top down approach. When a shortage of time & energy threatened, &/or I was less than enormously interested in the topic, I would do a little reading, and then map out an essay plan, which would then guide what I read and what notes I made. This approach resulted in very good, solid essays.
But my best work was always something that grew out of a broad base of knowledge & understanding, and took much time & effort to produce.
When I was working as a teacher, I taught students how to structure & plan their essays & narratives. Some students rebelled. Their essays could be loose & repetitive, their narratives almost a stream of consciousness series of events… but I got it.
They weren’t mature aged university students, who understood the need to engage the reader, hold their attention & support them to understand what was being said in the essay or story. As a result, they lacked motivation to learn these top-down thinking & planning skills, or to refine the products of their bottom up thinking & writing.
Sometimes I managed to convince them that what they saw as a formulaic approach to writing was actually a good skill to acquire, one that would serve them well in exams, or any other time when time or energy were short. When a “good” product was enough, & the best they could do was neither possible nor warranted.
And while teaching all of this, my own understanding of how poorly our education system caters for different types of thinkers, including some of the brightest minds.
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When I was working as a teacher, I taught students how to structure & plan their essays & narratives. Some students rebelled. Their essays could be loose & repetitive, their narratives almost a stream of consciousness series of events… but I got it.
They weren’t mature aged university students, who understood the need to engage the reader, hold their attention & support them to understand what was being said in the essay or story. As a result, they lacked motivation to learn these top-down thinking & planning skills, or to refine the products of their bottom up thinking & writing.
Sometimes I managed to convince them that what they saw as a formulaic approach to writing was actually a good skill to acquire, one that would serve them well in exams, or any other time when time or energy were short. When a “good” product was enough, & the best they could do was neither possible nor warranted.
And while teaching all of this, my own understanding of how poorly our education system caters for different types of thinkers, including some of the brightest minds.
And I’m wondering whether the visual arts are similar.
Obviously there are things to learn about media & technique that can & will help us to produce desired effects, but maybe it’s when we master those tried & true techniques, that we can then set out to bend or rewrite the rules about what we do & how.
In the meantime, I will go back to basics…
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@Susan60 Sounds like a wonderful way to learn.
It was. In the 1st 2.5 years of my degree, I was studying part time with both of my children at school & a supportive husband. He was both proud, & a little wary & defensive. But happy to give me the time I needed to write & research while he spent more time than usual with the kids. (And expected a prize for doing so.)
So I had the time I needed to learn that way.
It got a lot harder after that, when the marriage broke up. Single parenting, working part time etc. That’s when I had to force myself to be more formulaic.
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When I was working as a teacher, I taught students how to structure & plan their essays & narratives. Some students rebelled. Their essays could be loose & repetitive, their narratives almost a stream of consciousness series of events… but I got it.
They weren’t mature aged university students, who understood the need to engage the reader, hold their attention & support them to understand what was being said in the essay or story. As a result, they lacked motivation to learn these top-down thinking & planning skills, or to refine the products of their bottom up thinking & writing.
Sometimes I managed to convince them that what they saw as a formulaic approach to writing was actually a good skill to acquire, one that would serve them well in exams, or any other time when time or energy were short. When a “good” product was enough, & the best they could do was neither possible nor warranted.
And while teaching all of this, my own understanding of how poorly our education system caters for different types of thinkers, including some of the brightest minds.
-
As a mature aged uni student, I found research & essay drafting enormously difficult. Now I realise this is because I used a bottom up approach. I would read very widely, taking copious notes, and struggle not to get lost in a sea of information & the interpretations of various historians. But I persisted. Eventually I would end up with a horribly rough draft that was 10 times longer than the word limit. Then I would laboriously work through this, striking out sections that were interesting background, & would be considered relevant & useful in a much longer essay, but were insufficiently relevant in a short essay.
In the process, I would, of course, gain a thorough understanding of the topic/issue & its context. And, I ended up with an essay that was either very good, or excellent. (In History essays. I struggled to excel in politics, merely doing very well.)
I eventually learned how to plan & write using a top down approach. When a shortage of time & energy threatened, &/or I was less than enormously interested in the topic, I would do a little reading, and then map out an essay plan, which would then guide what I read and what notes I made. This approach resulted in very good, solid essays.
But my best work was always something that grew out of a broad base of knowledge & understanding, and took much time & effort to produce.
@Susan60 the research was often the most enjoyable part of the process
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@Susan60 the research was often the most enjoyable part of the process
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looks like this was more of a threat to juice the discussion, still an interesting discussion imo
Move tests to closed source repo · Issue #8082 · tldraw/tldraw
Move the test suite out of the open source tldraw/tldraw repo and into the closed source repo. Context The tldraw monorepo currently contains ~327 test files across unit, integration, and e2e tests: packages/tldraw: ~148 unit/integration...
GitHub (github.com)
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"slop fork" is a suitably ominous term, a++ will reuse
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tldraw is moving all of their tests from open source to closed source to prevent a "slop fork" (like what cloudflare just did to next.js)
times they are a changin'
(however sqlite has charged for its (extensive) test suite from the very beginning)
Move the test suite out of the open source tldraw/tldraw repo and into the closed source repo. Context The tldraw monorepo currently contains ~327 test files across unit, integration, and e2e tests: packages/tldraw: ~148 unit/integration...
GitHub (github.com)
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@js@podcastindex.social netflix not blowing 6 gajillion on dead IP is indeed good news for shareholders
