Tag: learning

Posted on

Time

Time and good counsel are the greatest gifts a mentor can give to a student. Many things are most easily learned by tuition. You can stumble upon them or learn them from books. But they are easiest to learn from a mentor.

Note that I do not say a master, as in master/apprentice. While there are parts of the world where that system hangs on, it was long gone in the USA when I started carving. I began with books, and later on, I found mentors who showed me tricks and offered advice.

As a craftsman I have to acknowledge the hours spent with mentors who chided me when I was being lazy, showed me techniques I needed to know, and relayed to me stories of times that form part of the trades legacy.

One mentor had come up as an apprentice in pre-war France. At a boat show one slow afternoon, he taught me a twist on tool sharpening he’d learnt as a journeyman. Another, a master model maker, walked the docks and floats with me and helped me see full-size vessels in miniature. I learned to evaluate what would and would not be seen in my carvings of the full-size vessel. It was a sort of surgery. You suggested it all was there while eliminating what the eye did not need to see in a miniature portrait.

I have had one or two mentors who were actually friendly competitors. One refused to teach me anything related to carving but generously gave me much needed advice on running a business that saved me money. Others just came through with encouragement when it was most needed.

Some mentors contributed wood for me to work with, and one gave me some tools, but of all the gifts you can receive, time and good counsel are the best gifts you can receive.

Posted on

Mrs. Kresge, Libraries, and the Sisters of Perpetual Pain

The nuns were clear. I was an incorrigible brat who would never learn to read. Sensing that they were wasting money, my parents removed me from parochial school and put me in the local public school. So much for the teaching abilities of the Sisters of Perpetual Pain!
Less than two months later, I was reading at grade level, and soon I was above that. Public school was good for me!
I may have omitted the excellent third-grade teacher I had, Mrs. Kresge, who made it her mission to save me from almost three years of unremitting agony.
OK, you get the general idea that nuns swinging yard sticks are not my favorite teaching method. Mrs. Kresge believed that you sponsor student interest by engagement. She found the topics that fascinated me and led me to the books. When I struggled, she tutored. Then, I began teaching myself—a method I’ve used throughout life – and she suggested that my parents take a trip with me to the library. The library was better than ice cream on a hot summer day.
Later, in adulthood, when stressed, I’d dream that I’d woken up on the floor of the history section in the Hempstead Public Library. That history section, the library, and the librarians had become my refuge.

I can’t say that I had one favorite book, but I know that when we moved back to the city, I took the memories of the library with me.

Daily writing prompt
Do you remember your favorite book from childhood?
View all responses
Posted on

AI

Let’s start by saying that I have no desire to “speak” with my editorial program’s new AI feature. Despite having worked on my doctorate, master’s, and bachelor’s degrees, I remain at the root of the folksinging road bum who dropped out of high school. I don’t want some idiot savant telling me how to improve my writing. I got it to check my spelling, assist me in placing commas, and watch for bad grammatical stuff. Ahhhhh. There it goes, suggesting that I should not use the word “really.” Up yours!

A while ago, I tried its suggestion in one paragraph. When it finished, I was not captivated; I was horrified. It was not an improvement; it was more of a drive-thru shooting of my writing style. I could not recognize my voice in the finished product. As result I turn off all the polite idiot popups suggesting that I try the generative AI settings. That’s not why I bought a subscription to their program.

I realize that not everyone in the blogosphere loves my writing style. But it is mine; I own it. I have no desire to sound like some neutered chat program. Everyone should rally around their own unique identity and voice. It may not be perfect, but it is authentic, and it is yours.

That’s all until my writing program tells me…“I’m sorry Lou, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Daily writing prompt
Who would you like to talk to soon?
View all responses
Posted on

Old Head

You only get one clean slate. That’s when you are a kid. After that, you can scrub at it, but it’ll always be a sort of palimpsest, with bits of the old layers faintly showing from below. So you can never totally scrub it completely clean. I don’t think this is a bad thing. It’s part of learning and incorporating the old with the new.

Being in a craft or art is the same way. First, you start fresh but soon find that answers often are found by working through mistakes. Some people take the process of working through failure as a sort of crusade. “Onward, despite the cost!” I’ve found it’s wiser to put a loss aside for a while and move to another project. Leave the puzzle where you can see it, and let your mind nibble about the edges of the problem. Eventually, you’ll solve it or leap ahead into finding a different way of doing things. 

Thrusting blindly at a problem wastes energy and leads to frustration. As in war, so is it in a craft; the value of frontal assaults is greatly exaggerated.

The process of attaining mastery is one of learning, making errors, correcting errors, learning effective habits, and freeing your mind to be creative. A pivotal concept is that learning is not a one-way process. You backtrack, learn new things that overwrite old ways of doing things, make modifications, and synthesize the new out of old all the time. You have a palimpsest.

If the term master is disagreeable, try this one – Old Head. An Old Head is a person who has been around, learned the ins and outs, works efficiently and makes it all look easy. Warning: Old Heads are not necessarily good verbal teachers. I had a Judo Sensei who could not tell you how to do a particular throw, but he’d show you a thousand times or until you mastered it.

Old Heads are not always formally taught. Old Heads work on railroads, in boatyards, art studios, and factories. If you need to learn something, look for an Old Head. Their clean slate days are long past, the smudges and stains are there to be seen, but they are a wonder to watch at work.

Posted on

Judo to the Rescue

When I was 15, my father enrolled me in Judo classes at a downtown New York City dojo. The instructors, my senseis, were young Japanese Judoka ( Judo enthusiasts). Their English skills were minimal, and much of the instruction required interpreters and much show and – “do it this way” demonstration.
In today’s terms, I had an attention deficit disorder. Teachers despaired of me. But the dojo seemed a good match for a kid who otherwise appeared to be only interested in his guitar. And to some extent, this is a story about the guitar.
At the dojo, I had two instructors: Sensei Ishido belonged to the school of throwing them around until they get the idea and learn to counter the technique. This method worked best with the former military in the classes; they had a Karate and Jujitsu background and already understood what was going on. Not so much with me, who gang members used to clean up alleyways. A conference among senseis placed me in Sensei Watanabe’s class instead.
Watanabe Sensei did understand that I had a problem at dojo focusing on technique. His method for focusing me on my learning problem was to painstakingly breakdown each throw and have me practice and practice until my muscle memory began to develop. Eventually, I flawlessly executed each technique. Twice a week, week after week, I traveled to the dojo to pound my body against the mat as I got thrown, and in turn, threw my fellow students.
Eventually, I improved and began to move up the ranking system of belts. Sensei decided that I needed a challenge and at randori ( sparring) matched me with a much taller, very advanced student who initially used me to clean the dojo mats. It didn’t help that the senseis found this amusing.
The amusement irked me more than a bit. But in a flash of inspiration, I used a surprise technique I had watched a visiting teacher from Japan use. Moving in as though I was preparing for a hip throw, I instead pulled the gi ( a heavy canvas practice jacket) off my opponent’s shoulder. In the tiny amount of time that this distracted him, I jerked his body off-center, stepped in, and tossed him to the mat with the most straightforward footsweep technique that all students learn in week one. To add insult to injury, he landed badly. I had won the randori, and the senior student went off to practice ukemi ( correct falling technique).
Over time, I found that while Watanabe Sensei’s teaching technique did not solve all of life’s problems, it applied very well to learning guitar and later carving.
We all learn in different ways, but I think the test of an excellent learning technique is how the student adapts it for use in other areas.