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yuuagoI recently finished reading a big fat book on viking-age history and whatnot, and after all that I feel as if I know even less about the period than I did before cracking it open. This happens every time I learn something new: I go into it thinking I have a vague idea of what it's all about, and I come out of it feeling as if I know nothing.
Always happens. Without fail. Like that time I was working on literature related to the War of 1812: I did so much research, wrote a 20-page paper on it, but after all that, did I understand it really? No. But I was left with the desire to learn even more about it... so, I suppose that's something.
It certainly doesn't help that I'm always left with the feeling that I don't fully understand what I've read. Were someone to ask me to tell them something about such-and-such subject, I'd be left saying "Uh... I don't know". I can't really form the thoughts into the words I need in order to be able to explain the parts that I think I understand a little bit, either. And whenever I do try, I always accidentally leave an important part out or get something wrong because I didn't understand it or I remembered it incorrectly. Though I probably absorb more than I realize I do.
Never mind me; this is just my endless frustration. щ(◉Д◉щ) Though I suppose -- well, isn't there a saying, "A wise man is one who realizes he knows nothing"? Or something to that effect. I suppose that's how it's going here, because I don't know anything about anything, even though I try to learn things and figure things out, and I'll willingly admit to that.
I guess I just realize it more now because I've been reading more nonfiction than I did back when I was in school (and watching more documentary film etc). I mean, in school I would take a book, grab the information I needed in order to write an essay, and then put it aside. But now I'm (trying) to read to learn things. It's in order to keep myself intellectually stimulated -- maybe it's a bit irrational, but I keep having this worry that if I don't take initiative and teach myself things and expose myself to stuff I don't know anything about (since I'm no longer in classes), then my brain will like, shrivel up and die, figuratively speaking.
I'm so glad I did decide to take this initiative, though, even if it frustrates me. I just never was able to do this sort of thing when I was in school. It's really, really hard to find the time to read about random stuff like the independence movement in soviet Estonia or the the formation of the solar system when you have a 20-page paper on the importance of the use of Cree vocabulary and mythological narratives in Scofield's poetry due in two days and coffee is what's keeping you upright because you haven't properly slept in a week. To use an extreme example, I mean.
... So. There it is, then. :Va
Always happens. Without fail. Like that time I was working on literature related to the War of 1812: I did so much research, wrote a 20-page paper on it, but after all that, did I understand it really? No. But I was left with the desire to learn even more about it... so, I suppose that's something.
It certainly doesn't help that I'm always left with the feeling that I don't fully understand what I've read. Were someone to ask me to tell them something about such-and-such subject, I'd be left saying "Uh... I don't know". I can't really form the thoughts into the words I need in order to be able to explain the parts that I think I understand a little bit, either. And whenever I do try, I always accidentally leave an important part out or get something wrong because I didn't understand it or I remembered it incorrectly. Though I probably absorb more than I realize I do.
Never mind me; this is just my endless frustration. щ(◉Д◉щ) Though I suppose -- well, isn't there a saying, "A wise man is one who realizes he knows nothing"? Or something to that effect. I suppose that's how it's going here, because I don't know anything about anything, even though I try to learn things and figure things out, and I'll willingly admit to that.
I guess I just realize it more now because I've been reading more nonfiction than I did back when I was in school (and watching more documentary film etc). I mean, in school I would take a book, grab the information I needed in order to write an essay, and then put it aside. But now I'm (trying) to read to learn things. It's in order to keep myself intellectually stimulated -- maybe it's a bit irrational, but I keep having this worry that if I don't take initiative and teach myself things and expose myself to stuff I don't know anything about (since I'm no longer in classes), then my brain will like, shrivel up and die, figuratively speaking.
I'm so glad I did decide to take this initiative, though, even if it frustrates me. I just never was able to do this sort of thing when I was in school. It's really, really hard to find the time to read about random stuff like the independence movement in soviet Estonia or the the formation of the solar system when you have a 20-page paper on the importance of the use of Cree vocabulary and mythological narratives in Scofield's poetry due in two days and coffee is what's keeping you upright because you haven't properly slept in a week. To use an extreme example, I mean.
... So. There it is, then. :Va
Yuu. Fic writer & book lover. M/Canada.