Learning for Dummies
Topic: Writing
I was going through this website when it all of the sudden hit me: why do I have to go online to find this type of information? I'm a student in a Master of Writing program - shouldn't I be learning this stuff there?

But I'm not, and the crazy thing is this website is only repeating stuff that everyone out there who writes already knows. The question is, why isn't it taught to the people that want to learn, that want to become writers?

There's something wrong with the way people are being taught. Something is terribly wrong. Very rarely will I leave (or have I left) a classroom feeling like I've learned something useful that I can go out and do in the real world (some Photoshop classes and Math stuff excluded).

Someone was telling me the other day that law school is really two years longer than the program is because where you really do the learning is during your first two years of working. The school part, he said, was basically just to week out the hard workers from those that wouldn't be able to cut it.

That's ridiculous.

It also has something to say about the popularity of the "for Dummies" and "Idiot's Guide to" books. Sure we're lazy, but these books seem to rely more on practicality than theory - hence why people turn to them despite taking high level classes or courses (I'm reminded of a time when Ben Affleck was getting into his convertible, a paparazzi taking video the whole time, and he was asked if the book in the back seat was his, he looked back and smirked, "Yeah, that's mine." And off he went. The book? Acting for Dummies.).

Why can't the teachers in the classroom be both practical and whatever it is they do in there when they're not being practical (theoretical?)?

I think they should be, and I think I could be - at least for certain subjects I'm comfortable with.

And that's what I'll do if and when I decide to teach a class.

It's what I did when I coached baseball, and that opened my eyes to the fluff that I had to wade through in order to actually learn a lot of the stuff that, in the end, I ended up learning on my own through trial and error.


(the end of this post kind of went in a different direction, but whatever, it's a blog, not a term paper (thank god))

PS I just spell-checked this post (something I should do more often) and it didn't recognize the word "blog" - thought it should be "bog."
Irony, she is a good thing.