I'm still shithouse at it, resulting in consistent nights where I'm not getting enough sleep ergo not thinking straight for the majority of the following day :/
I had one late night a few days ago (which totally wasn't my fault) and now I'm in a pattern of staying up late. I'm failing miserably at trying to break it,
It's consuming information rather than interacting and learning from it. It's the same reason I don't like and in most cases am simply unable to just sit down and watch a TV show or movie, it always has to be in the background or something else has to be on my plate to be able to take it in. Sometimes I'll get glued to it, but I can't sit and watch anything. I think if kids get into the habit of that early, they'll grow up with this subconscious expectation that the only way to learn is by sitting and watching rather than participating and experiencing. I know that even today, I have trouble learning how to do anything (shit, even learning ABOUT anything) unless I can fuck around with it myself and establish how my own brain interprets it's way around whatever it is rather than someone else's (because frequently, how someone else describes/instructs something is drastically different from myself).
Probably also why I'm drawn to games that do a good job of integrating what's happening on the screen with an appropriate audio scape. It's one thing to play CoD and have explosions and shit (where the sound just matches what's happening onscreen), but it's another to have graphics and sound interact, play and merge with each other to the point where it amplifies the experience (see: Rez, Lumines, Tempest 2000/Space Giraffe) rather than just compliment it. One is showing you it's world from a perspective, the other is pulling you in and making you an integral part of it.
Fuck me, that was a ramble.
I learn the same way as you, by doing. I need to mess with whatever it is and experience the various failures before I can begin to truly understand what it is. The more I see how something doesn't work, the more I can understand how it does. 'Experience is the best teacher' as the saying goes sums it up perfectly. It's probably why I loved science class so much in high school, because the teacher I had for most of it thought the same way I did. He'd explain what he was talking about, write shit on the board for us to copy down and then it was time to screw around with whatever it was we were learning. It was fun and engaging and formed a strong memory
because I did it. As much as I was (am?) a screw-up in many ways, I kicked arse in that class doing 4 units of it my senior 2 years; even the girl who was super-smart and aced every class would be shocked when I'd beat her in tests and such. The fact that it played to this strength and was interesting enough that I
cared made all the difference.
That huge tangent aside, some do learn by watching someone else do it (also the first step of doing, so you are more informed on what you should be attempting), others can learn by listening, reciting and note-taking. This is probably something you already know
but, I think I understand what you mean and where you're coming from. Building a habit of
being passive about things, whether it be about entertainment or education, especially early on, is not a good thing. I gathered that this was the core of what you were saying. Letting whatever it may be come to you instead of going to it, being proactive or even just plain active.
I'm thinking of examples that would be seen quite frequently where this might eventuate. People that expect to sit back be entertained and complain when something wasn't to their liking. People who sit back and expect to be educated while not applying themselves and blame the educator for not trying hard enough to teach them. The worst example I can think of is those who see something new, creative, different, interesting, collaborative or whatever and say "I could have done that"; be it a photograph, a sketch, a painting, a short story, a simple game, a silly YouTube video, whatever.
The world comes to no one, waits for no one, does not owe anyone anything. If someone is bored, disinterested, lackadaisical and so on, they need to get involved and make something happen otherwise
they are the problem. It's okay to watch, listen and learn, but if none of it is ever applied then it has all been wasted.
That went to a much different place than I intended it to. Whoops. I hope you get what I meant.
This cracked me up. It also reminded me of poor Jintor.
