Education

I’m A Fraud: Why You Should Trust Me

February 14, 2010 in Education, Socialization

Let me be straight forward, right now. I’m a nobody, I know nothing, and currently my life is headed nowhere. This might sound sad, but what I’ve found even more disturbing is that I’ve been able to pass off my own personal delusions, as reality. What do I mean by that? I’ve managed to get people to praise me, by merely provided evidence of my delusions, sure they might look good on the surface, but behind it the whole structure is being held up by toothpicks.

I’m good at two things, making people believe in me, even when I know they shouldn’t, and continually learning. The first is disturbing, the second is nice and provides a way to make myself more appealing to others. Like I said in my post about social media experts and masters, the only thing you need to be considered an expert, is more knowledge than the person you’re giving you information to, that’s it. I don’t need to know much to know more than you as a regular person to be considered an expert, so long as I can provide even a minute amount of proof. Once I have you,  I just have to keep my story straight, and avoid experts who know more than me A contrary action to the education.

In order to learn anything you must break the topic down, and interact with those who are knowledgeable. Since the help of a mentor, or other expert, is beneficial, I love getting in to arguments or seeking out the experts to have conversation. I take their word as solid advice and information and break it down so that I can more easily understand it. This is occasionally easy and more often very complicated, but if you endure and have one skill, which will be mentioned in just a second, it becomes much more simple. Education is all about gaining access to the  information you want and need; there are two simple ways to find the data you want, discourse with an expert, or searching for it.

The one skill that you need to  make this all work is listening. If you can listen and understand others,  it will make you much more likely to learn something from them. I realize, I need to turn the tables and re-analyze what I project, because I’ve had a few people ask me questions about myself, that I don’t feel capable to answer without exaggeration or lying.

If they’re was ever one person, above all others, to listen to, it’s yourself and your’ gut reactions, they let you know what’s right and what’s wrong. I’ve been lying by omission about what I know for too long, and now it’s time for me to listen to myself, and even more importantly everyone I interact with, because I haven’t for too long. If I get schooled, I will admit defeat and ask for assistance. I’m tired of creating tension, so I’m going to begin bowing out  gracefully, rather than turning my face and walking away, like a coward. I need to listen, and I hope you  understand this and will allow me to be someone who you can trust.

P.S. If I interact with you on any service, I invite you to step up and slap me if I ever seem out of line. We all need it, at some point.

Comments

Goals For March ‘09

March 3, 2009 in Education, Productivity

So this is something that I was inspired to do by Erik Kastner over at his blog Meta|ateM. He did it last month and was fairly succesful and it also goes along with something that I have thought about and possible written about, providing people public knowledge of what your goals are so they can hold you accountable. So here is my list for March.

Get a working prototype of my Main project finished.

This might not get done but I’m really hoping that I can as I spent the past month working on the algorithm and design of the system. I think I can get the base down in 2 weeks but some of the higher functioning algorithms will take a bit longer but I have to build a working test body before I get to them.

15 posts

I know I was lacking last month, in fact this is the first post in over 2 weeks. I’ll be finishing a bunch of posts I’ve been working on and should be able to hit 15 fairly easily.

Find a new car

This is new as I just totalled my car an hour ago, at the time of writing. I was planning on looking more towards the end of the month but looks like that clock was stepped up a bit.

Build up my chipstack on Full-Tilt

Lately, I’ve been playing more often I haven’t reached a point where I’m able to sacrifice money from my daily life so I just play  for fun and intellectual challenge. Right now, I’m at 3,000 and I want to reach 10,000 by the end of the month.

I’ll update you guys on how I did at the end of the month. Oh and for those of you that subscribe and visit the site I’m wondering if the new design is more pleasing to you?

Comments

Killing Time Sinks

January 29, 2009 in Education, Productivity, Strategy

Just over a week ago, I started playing World of Warcraft(again) and I was have a great time getting back into the game.  Unfortunately, for you guys it completely knocked out my time for blogging and also some of my other things that I enjoy. My estimate for in-game time is over 40 hours for the week, that’s a full time job, what the hell could I have been thinking. So I’m going to write down a list of ways to seek and remove time sinks.

Do a Weekly Analysis for 1-2 Weeks

You don’t have to over thorough with you tracking, but every couple of hours write down what your doing. If you do something that could take a few hours write before you start and when you end, including the time for each. At the end of the week, compile all that information and look for stuff that appears rather excessive and see if you can cut it out; for me excessive would be anything above 6-8 hours for the week. Obviously, you can’t cut sleep, dining, or commuting out completely, but it is possible to cut back.

How to Cut Back

If say reading too much(though I don’t think that’s possible), you could cut the number of books available to you so that you read them more slowly and cherish them, or maybe it’s a social activity, you can cut your funding so that you have to stay home. Find a way to either make the time have more value, rather than desaturate it with over use, or put a flow valve on it so that you can constrict it. If it’s possible you could also just go cold turkey and cut it completely, this was my choice in canceling my subscription and removing the software from my system.

Find Something Productive to Fill the Time

This is the big one anytime you try to stop a habit, you need a distraction to prevent you from going back to your old ways.  You need something that you find interesting and will add value to your life. Here are a few, some that I plan on using

  • Blogging( I know I already am, I want to do it more frequently)
  • Freelancing
  • Programming
  • Reading
  • Focused Topical Learning
  • Get A Job
  • Head Back to School
Comments

Computer Issues & A Few Ideas

January 16, 2009 in Economy, Education, Technology

For everyone who waited for something Tuesday and Thursday I’ll apologize. I ended up doing a clean install trying to get my burner to work Sunday evening, because I wanted Windows 7. So, instead of doing anything productive I spent my time on my computer searching for everything to get it back into working condition and coming up with ideas for posts, improving some products, and just flat out re-evaluating my own purposes.

It’s sad to here that Steve Jobs is stepping down, but maybe whoever takes over while he’s gone will start making improvements to their fringe products like iTunes. Just the other day I was using it, as it is my default player, and I realized that Window’s Media Player had a better user interface, though slower and not as pretty. In WMP, if you want to listen to an album by itself all you have to do is double click on it’s art or right-click on it’s title and select play. iTunes doesn’t have this it takes at least 2-5 clicks and some search through different menu’s to get to play just an album, that’s quite a disrespectful use of the the user’s time.

In other news, people have started to look at the education bubble that we’ll be facing in the next few years. John Robb’s article “Industrial Education” has caused a stir, “There is reason to believe that costs of higher education (direct costs and lost income) are now nearly equal (in net present value) to the additional lifetime income derived from having a degree.” I like how he’s done this because his analysis comes toward the same view as my posts from early last year on Social Perception and Personal Economics of education where I discuss the topic, but he also comes up with some great ideas on replacing it.

That’s all I have to say this morning, I’ll be back in a few days with new posts, now that everything is back in working order.

Comments

Non-Linearity Of Education

December 23, 2008 in Education, Socialization

I was re-reading through, “The Black Swan,” and came across this passage.

Your child does not seem to have a learning impediment, but he does not seem to want to speak. The schoolmaster pressures you to start considering “other options,” namely therapy. You argue with her to no avail (she is supposed to be the “expert”). Then, suddenly, the child starts composing elaborate sentences, perhaps a  bit too elaborate for his age group. I will repeat that linear progression, a Platonic idea, is not the norm.”

Now, the reason I mention this is that I know for a fact that this exact example is very true. I went through it when I was in  2nd grade, of the K-12 system, at age 7. I didn’t know how to tie my shoes, dress myself, but the big one where school comes in was my reading comprehension and verbal language.  However, by my 3rd grade year, age 8, I could tie my shoes and dress myself, but also my reading comprehension had jumped to that of an average 10th graders, verbal language was also on par with older students. Over time, they have both lost that advantage.

Education will never be a linear system, yet, that’s how our systems treats it. Our system focuses on the ones with the most promise to fill the position, the rest are left alone or sent to remediation to see if they can recover, most can’t. I was the exception to this case and even now I’m behind in my composition and verbal usage, I’m sure it shows.

I would be pleased to hear any stories that you may have to share on the subject.

Comments

« Previous entries

Topics

Archives

Powered by WordPress.org - WordPress Theme deZine by ThemeShift.com