overdue for a 3am rant
You guys, I am sick of seeing "natural talent" waved around as if it's the only damn thing that guarantees you success in a field.
Inasmuch as I believe in natural talent, it's only that it gives you a bit of a leg up over the next guy, but if he takes an extra year of classes he'll end up kicking your ass anyways. So much of being good is practice, and so much of practice is caring enough *to* practice. People ask me, how do you draw so well? I've been drawing shit on every surface since the third grade, is how. I've taken a number of art classes. You could do this too, if you had done that -- but you didn't, because you didn't really care about being able to draw, just like I don't really care about being able to write music (I keep *meaning* to take that theory class). Whatever, there's other equally cool stuff to do with my life.
If you have talent, it makes your first encounter with something easy. That makes you more likely to like it -- after all, it brought you easy success! But at some point it'll get hard for you too, and then you find out how much you really like it when you're up until 5am with all the rest of the guys who didn't have that talent. Which is why I'm sick of it being like some magical thing when I'm good at something, especially if that's art or physics. I PRACTICED, okay. And so can you.
This rant brought to you by reddit, which is insisting that teachers who are good at their job just have some magical gift, what can you do. LEARN TO TEACH, is what you can do.
Inasmuch as I believe in natural talent, it's only that it gives you a bit of a leg up over the next guy, but if he takes an extra year of classes he'll end up kicking your ass anyways. So much of being good is practice, and so much of practice is caring enough *to* practice. People ask me, how do you draw so well? I've been drawing shit on every surface since the third grade, is how. I've taken a number of art classes. You could do this too, if you had done that -- but you didn't, because you didn't really care about being able to draw, just like I don't really care about being able to write music (I keep *meaning* to take that theory class). Whatever, there's other equally cool stuff to do with my life.
If you have talent, it makes your first encounter with something easy. That makes you more likely to like it -- after all, it brought you easy success! But at some point it'll get hard for you too, and then you find out how much you really like it when you're up until 5am with all the rest of the guys who didn't have that talent. Which is why I'm sick of it being like some magical thing when I'm good at something, especially if that's art or physics. I PRACTICED, okay. And so can you.
This rant brought to you by reddit, which is insisting that teachers who are good at their job just have some magical gift, what can you do. LEARN TO TEACH, is what you can do.