The module for school this week
was about learners with exceptionalities. In the textbook I
encountered a very thought-provoking quote, which defined
intelligence as “the ability to get what you want out of life by
purposefully using your strengths to compensate for your weaknesses.”
This parallels what I saw in the blog that I mentioned a few days
ago, about learning new skills. I have had many, many goals in my
life, but I have often looked at my failures or progress relative to
these goals and given up. This also explains some of the appeal of
video games—I make goals and usually I can make consistent and
visual progress toward those goals. In some games progress be lost—I
hate that so much that I restart or cheat, and if I can’t do that I
will give up on the game, just like I give up in real life when faced
with setbacks or lack of progress. The blogger I mentioned sets the
example of examining these obstacles and considering how to overcome
them. I’m sure for most of my life I would have said that this is a
great skill, but only because I’ve seen how to do it laid out so
clearly do I believe that I can do likewise.
Right
now I’m working on some skills, but there are a lot more that I’d
like to learn in the future. In addition to language learning, I’d
like to learn how to talk to people, how to ask questions of anyone,
pottery (more), ballroom dance (more), cooking (more), sewing,
carpentry, farming, how to sing better, write fiction, write poetry,
speak in different accents with consistency, play violin and piano,
and many other skills that I may not have even encountered yet. For
now, though, I’m experimenting with this way of living to see if I
can apply it to this variety of areas.
Youtube
has had a lot of ads for something called Master Class lately, where
you take an online class with someone who is famous in their field.
I’m skeptical of this because an expert (especially a popular one)
doesn’t always make a good teacher, and it doesn’t help that most
of the topics they advertise are trendy, plus they’re not usually
interesting to me. But today I saw an ad for creative writing with
Neil Gaiman, and he basically said that writing a rough draft is like
driving through the fog, and writing a second draft is trying to make
it seem like you knew what you were doing all along. That was very
encouraging to me. Although I don’t find Neil Gaiman’s novels
particularly cohesive, Faulkner said something that wasn’t
dissimilar. After my last attempt to write a novel (I think it was in
2014), I had more or less told myself that I didn’t have the talent
for it and I should just give up. I wouldn’t consider writing to be
a strong desire of mine at the moment, but it is undeniably something
that I have wanted to do since I was very young, and I think it’s
something worthwhile, too.
Yesterday,
I read about decision fatigue. I suspect that I’m more susceptible
to it than most people because I put so much effort in every
decision, but instead of making poor decisions (though I do that
too), I usually just put off decisions when I get tired. This might
even explain why I have so much trouble corresponding with people,
and writing in general.
JAPANESE
知能というのは、長所が短所を補って生活の中で欲しいものを得る方法を見つける能力です。なお、知能がある人はほとんど他の人より強くて、大きくて、モテルひとです。
Yesterday,
I wrote this translation of the two impressive points that I learned
this week in school. I’m not sure what today’s text is going to
be yet. To mine my vocabulary words, I just read a whole bunch of
newspaper headlines, not seeing anything interesting enough to seem
worth reading. Almost all of the articles were about the corona
virus, which I don’t want to read about anymore. I might have to
look for a new source of reading material.
5-MINUTE
PLANK
Yesterday
I did three plank sessions. The first two lasted 1:40, and in the
last I held out for 1:45, which means that according to the original
challenger’s definition I have passed this challenge. Still, I do
want to see if it’s possible to hold a plank five minutes
continuously, so I’m going to try for longer sessions from today.
Counting today I have eight days left in the challenge, so I’m
going to try to add 20 seconds each day, starting with 2:40 from
today. In my first session this morning, I only managed 2:30.
DANCING
I
started dancing for exercise over four years ago. In this time, I’ve
learned a lot about dance styles, and I’ve learned a couple of neat
moves. For the most part though, I look like an amateur who learned a
few basic moves but doesn’t know how to use them well. My progress
is depressing. Last night I got discouraged again, and I wanted to
stop just twenty minutes into my session. Fatigue might have played a
part in that too, and I’m also annoyed that I have to work so hard
to avoid making the building shake. Plus, so many of my moves didn’t
feel rhythmically appropriate for the music I was listening to.
PROGRAMMING
I
had enough time to work on my program, but I felt a little
overwhelmed by how much I had to do. I also felt lacking in
confidence in my ability to correct bugs and implement features that
can be used intuitively. I’ve got some steps broken down, but I
think I can reduce them further into manageable tasks which will
hopefully be less daunting.
BIBLE
MEMORY
I
reviewed Psalms 6 and 7 today. 7 is long and was originally rather
difficult to memorize, and I found my memory of the middle section
quite shaky. Even so, I think with a few days of review it will come
back to me.
RUBIK’S
CUBE
I’m
adding this to the list—my goal will be to average under 40 seconds
by the end of March. This is a mostly useless skill, but I’ve found
that it helps me concentrate on other work and gives me a nice short
break when I need it. Plus, I think it’s very easy to see progress
with a Rubik’s cube because it’s such a physical activity, so I’m
using it to test out this method of learning skills and, if it works,
use my success as to encourage my learning of other skills. I
mentioned earlier this week that my current solving average (as long
as I don’t make mistakes) is about 70 seconds. I’ve since been
learning some algorithms that should make my time faster in the long
run, but so far it has only made my mistakes more frequent. I have
one more PLL (fourth and final step) algorithm to learn, and then
I’ll practice these algorithms and recognizing when to use them.
I’m hoping I’ll be able to use these algorithms correctly (even
if not speedily) by the end of February. From March, I plan to work
on F2L, the second step, which is supposed to be done intuitively,
and therefore will be the most difficult and require the most
practice. Once I use this method consistently, I’ll start working
on OLL algorithms, the third step. I’ve spent most of February
working on my first step, so I think it’s doing a lot better than
the rest.
One
important thing that I need to remember in practicing this (and other
skills as well) is that I need to be intentional. I’m really bad
about this when I practice instruments, as I much prefer to play the
whole song rather than practice short, problematic passages. The past
few weeks with the Rubik’s cube has been mostly the same way—I
solve it from start to finish instead of working on my weaknesses in
each step. To discourage myself from doing this, I’m going to say
that I can only record (time) two solves a day, and all my other
plays must be paying attention to individual steps. I hope this won’t
take the fun out of it.
x
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