Because learning without creation is pointless

I've been trying to write a story for the last couple of weeks.  On a good day I write about 1,000 words.  Prolific I am not.  It's because, surprisingly enough, I find fiction writing to be exhausting in a way that writing here is not.  Writing on my blog is casual--just me spitting out whatever is rattling around in my head.  Writing a story is different--it needs to be "right".  And finding the right words to explain the right actions in the right way leaves me exhausted after just a scene or two.  Which is ok.  Because there isn't actually a time line on anything and if I it takes me till October of 2015 (which is what the NaNoWriMo website is predicting based off my current rate of writing) then...ok.  Why not?

oh, it's actually November of next year...hooray!

But, it also means that today I just wanted to take a break and do some writing that wasn't quite so difficult for me.  Perhaps later I will write another scene in my story.  But for now, it is the mental equivalent of sweatpants and chocolate time for my brain.

Miley...I think you're doing that wrong...

So let's talk about the usefulness of education.  In my last post I mentioned how I'm adjusting to adult, non-married life.  I talked about my recent interest in researching fairy tales and how I questioned whether or not reading arcane academic articles was a better use of my time than perusing facebook and buzzfeed.  I left it open ended, implying I wasn't completely sure about the answer.

Well, inasmuch as I am capable of being completely sure of anything (I'm not), I will say that I am sure.

With qualifications.

Whether it is my Mormonism or just me, I have to say that educating myself, even about the most obscure and useless of topics is an improvement over entertainment-grazing the internet for babies and kittens (which is not to say that there isn't a place for babies and kittens and gif-fests).  If for no other reason than that the latter requires absolutely nothing from your brain.  And if my primary pass-time is something that I can do equally well when I am literally half asleep, there is something wrong with my pass-time.  Hence, I declare obscure research a winner!

But frankly, it's not actually a huge step up to go from facebook to obscure research.  There's a last step missing.  And that is where my qualifications come in.  (guys.....I'm sorry, but I'm having a really hard time focusing on the rest of my post with that gif repeating above me over and over...)

Ok, refocusing.  What I'm talking about is synthesis.  This is a thing that, ideally, you learned about in high school.  If you didn't learn about it in high school then I am praying that you learned about it in college.  But since I've been a college TA, I know that many many people did not, so I will give a quick summary, though I'm pretty confident that none of you, my 12 lovely readers, are these people.  Anneke, if you're reading this, bear with a non-education major as I try to explain this.  There are different levels of learning, each one implying a certain depth of understanding.  Because understanding is not the same thing as knowing.  Think of it....think of it like acting.  Imagine a scale, and on one end you have Antonio Banderas learning his first Holywood part phonetically because he didn't speak English at the time.  He knew his lines, but he didn't understand them.  All he could do was repeat back exactly what he had memorized.  On the other end of the scale you have, um...someone like Robin Williams or Anthony Hopkins.  These are men who know their lines, know their characters, know the story, understand all those things, and using them, they riff and improvise and actually create more than what is in the script.  This is synthesis, and this is what is necessary to make education worthwhile.

hey look! A little picture about exactly my topic!

It is a hard lesson to learn, especially for those students who made it to college without learning it.  So many kids would email me or approach me in class to ask "Why didn't I get an A?  I covered all the study points."  Even setting aside my feelings on grade inflation, the most basic answer is that simply regurgitating a list of facts is not demonstrative of complete education.  It's Antonio Banderas speaking out sounds whose meanings he couldn't comprehend.  To show me that you actually understand what those facts mean you have to synthesize them into something greater than the constituent parts.  Tell me why those facts were significant.  Tell me why we're studying that story.  Tell me anything, as long as it shows that you've not just memorized the information, but actually digested it and comprehended its significance.  Be Anthony Hopkins disappearing into his character so that you forget that he isn't actually a terrifying madman in real life.  Be Robin Williams riffing so much during the making of Aladdin  that they could have made three movies on his material alone.

Which brings us back to research for research's sake.  It's true, pumping my brain full of facts is better than turning it off entirely and tucking it away in a corner.  But better still than that is taking all those facts and doing something with them.  In my case, right now, I am using my research to write my own version of one of my favorite fairy tales (I hope to adapt more in the future).  Sometimes I write quasi-scholarly analyses of stories or movies or books here on my blog.  Maybe I just tell my boss about how strange the stories are.  Whatever I do, about not just fairy tales but any other topic I research, the point is that once I've put the information in my brain I need to work with it.  If I don't, it might as well not be there in the first place, taking up space.  Because not only does synthesizing your knowledge demonstrate a deeper and more thorough understanding of it...it actually creates that understanding.

Synthetic thinking is a..."higher" level of thinking than consumptive.  It takes more work.  In practical terms that means that you just don't really do it without making yourself do it.  And you don't make yourself do it without a reason.  Now that reason may be simply because you enjoy it (that is why I write this blog).  But until I sit down and write a blog post about the importance of College Girl literature I don't actually fully understand that importance.  The bits and pieces of my thoughts are all floating around in my head but I've never taken the time or energy to straighten them all out and organize them and make something of them.  This is actually exactly what is happening when you're talking to someone and you explain something and they get all excited and exclaim "Exactly!  That's exactly what I think, you just put it so much more clearly!"  What they're actually saying is "I had all those bits of idea drifting around in my head, too, but I never sat down and put them all together like you have just done and I can recognize the idea all put together there in your words!"

If only more people understood the principle of synthesis I think the world as a whole would be a much better place.  Synthetic thinking leads to an understanding of and ability to both articulate and support one's own beliefs and ideals rather than a blind defensiveness.  It leads to developments of philosophy and art and science.  And the thing is, everyone is capable of it.  It's not a "smart" vs. "dumb" thing.  If you want to be that reductive you could, I suppose, argue that it is a "disciplined" vs. "indulgent" thing.  But even then, you can't expect someone to discipline their mind in a certain way if they have no understanding of what that way even is.

But maybe I've managed to explain it successfully here.  And maybe someone who didn't quite understand it will read this and then they will  (or maybe not...I'm not so optimistic about my writing/explaining abilities).  And then, just maybe, they will have the discipline to start trying to think this way.  And I suppose that if I can manage to inspire that series of events with my blog for just one person then that will be a good day's work.