Writing knowledge

[magid]

Queue mentioned a writing class assignment for students to identify five things they know well, enough so that they could write an article about them.

I started thinking about that today. What do I know that well? It took a while before anything came to mind; I tend to think that there's more I don't know than I do about most topics. Eventually I came up with Judaism (though I think Cellio is a much much better writer than I am about pretty much every topic I've read her writings on, and though I know about a drop in the sea of Torah), home cooking, and children's books. Oh, yeah, high school math textbooks (as if anyone would want to know much about them; so many people run the other way when faced with them...). Somehow it seems that after all the fancy education, I should know a bit more than this.

Current Food: roasted onions, red peppers, potatoes, and sweet potatoes

Comments

[magid.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the encouragement (though I have to say, I wrote the post more as a thought than as a plan for actually writing an article. Perhaps that should change...).

It's true that it's a lot easier to see one's own imperfections than others: lack of complete knowledge, the fits and starts that just don't go anywhere, all that stuff. In some moods it's harder to remember that than it should be.

When I was in school, I tended to write the shortest papers; I couldn't seem to see what I should explain further. I think I'm a bit better about that now, but not as much as I could be.
Hrm. Maybe I should write an article or full-fledged essay of some sort, just to see if I can (and like what I write, after).

[cellio]

When I was in school, I tended to write the shortest papers;

Heh. Whereas I tended to be the student who was responsible for assignments like this: "5-page paper, 8.5x11-inch paper, font no smaller than 10pt, margins no smaller than 1 inch all around, single-spaced (not 0.9-spaced), standard kerning between letters". I had, shall we say, difficulty covering a topic in a limited space, because there was always some exception to the generalization that had to be noted for the sake of correctness. :-) (I got better, in case you're wondering.)

[magid.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm impressed that whoever had to mention standard kerning...

I think it was easy for me to avoid dealing with exceptions when writing somewhat focused liberal arts papers. I'd think it would be different in science.

My mom is a twin; apparently my aunt was able to expand pieces, my mom was able to edit them down, and between them, they got it just right. (Somehow, when this piece of family history is mentioned, no one talks about how two people could turn in one paper. Unless they just helped each other with their papers. Dicey, either way.)
I inherited my mom's talent only...

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

If you'd like help I have it on good authority that your little brother can do both at the same time.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Thanks.
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[cellio]

Heh. I'm impressed that whoever had to mention standard kerning...

I had word-processing tools, and I knew how to use them. Scribe and (later) LaTex: by geeks, for geeks. :-)

To be fair, though, that was one particular professor, whose lack of specificity had been noted early on in the semester, so he and I made sort of a game of me exploiting one loophole at a time and him closing it to see what I'd do next. I had actually used the kerning trick a couple of times outside of that class, but mostly didn't need to go that far to meet length requirements.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Glad you didn't have to kern toooo much to keep in length requirements! I didn't know what kerning was until after grad school, when I started working in grad school. (And didn't even have a computer of my own to write papers on until halfway through college.)
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