"It struck me then, perhaps for the first time in my life, that intelligence is really not about what you know. Intelligence is about whether or not you have the capacity to learn or be taught. It is perhaps also about curiosity." This matters so much, especially in these horrific conversations about AI and academia. It's not about content; it's about inquiry and practice and understanding. But so few people seem to want to make time for that.
I wholeheartedly agree. It’s noticing the curiosity, taking it seriously all the way through discomfort of not knowing, fumbling and constant failure. I find the practice to be most like sports or dance or anything where repetition and resilience is required to grow or discover a new chapter. And, as you said, it requires our most precious thing: time!
This is wonderful. After reading the AI essay in The New Yorker this morning, I felt so blue about the way we are failing to understand the deep pleasures of thinking and discovery. And this piece is the curative.
As an academic librarian, this article was a delight to read (and prompted me to reflect so much on the research process in general that I got off at the wrong train stop on my way into work today). In librarianship we call the strategy you describe of starting from a source and tracing footnotes, citations, references, etc. "the snowball method" and it's one I am always recommending to students and researchers just coming into a new topic area. It's one of the best ways to trace the evolution of a line of thought backward to its origins, and increasingly a way of even tracing it forward as more and more digital databases add "cited by" features to their metadata. Even JSTOR has that now! In any case, thank you so much for writing about this experience, it made my librarian heart swell three sizes like the grinch this morning.
I think this is my favourite of your newsletters so far. So much of it resonates for me, a scientist who also learned how to learn in graduate school and who learned how to extend that process of digging deeper and going down rabbit holes of references and related reading on other topics; I would emerge from the fog of hoovering up information with what felt like a literal new way of seeing and thinking, and it has served me well in MY amateur forays into Stuff I'm Interested In or Stuff I'm Annoyed By And Need To Better Understand (sometimes that latter is more motivating, which is probably a character flaw of mine!).
I 100% agree on the joys of being an amateur and an autodidact. We can read, learn, and enjoy just for the hell of it, and no one can stop us!
Thank you for this. I was trained as a literary critic but no longer work in the academy. I’ve been working through exactly what I do with the skills and capacity that critical training gave me and what relationship it should have to my writing, my voice. I used to think I needed to keep the two ways of making with ideas as far apart as possible, but recently I’ve been less absolute and that has been a good change. Reading this helped this morning.
Long ago I was fortunate to attend New College in Florida, where are teachers individually trained us to read original texts of criticism and to create the equivalent of your PDF methodology. I also trained in biochemistry. This learning has enriched my life, and continues to do so in retirement. I especially liked your description of evolving state of intelligence. Learning how to learn is priceless.
I always enjoy your writing on topics like these as they always create the desire in me to want to better my craft. I am trying to improve my review writing. For books that is. I have realized that it's much different now from when I started a few years ago. But I still think there's more to be improved upon. Will you say the same tips you mention above also apply for writing reviews? And what would you recommend as an entryway into studying to better myself at it?
This is so helpful in terms of both the why and the how for approaching learning, research, and writing. Time to make sure I've got enough printer ink for the heaps of pdfs I'm about to collect.
This was so fun to read and incredibly generous. I needed the reminder to slow down and be more patient with my ideas. To enter a conversation. I also really needed this process broken down for me and wish I had had it many years ago when I was struggling in my MA program. Thank you.
your blog has been a really useful resource and a breath of fresh air in the last year--I found it when I was looking for advice on MFA statements of purpose, finally breathed a huge sigh of relief when I submitted my applications, then jumped back to full-blown panic when I actually got in and had to do the work I theorized about in my statements.
getting into the work has required much more deeply considered reading lists than I'm used to, and this is a really nice roadmap for the craft study I've been putting off. thanks for somehow firing off the perfect blog posts to cover my post-under pre-grad gap, you're a lifesaver.
When I taught library research workshops (I was a university librarian for 18 years), that iterative process you describe was exactly what I tried to model for students. I was hoping, in the 50 or 110 or however many minutes their professor had granted me, to help them get past the "find 10 sources and get on with the assignment" that a lot of them had (quite understandably) fallen into. Because, as you say, reading those articles was an opportunity to figure out what they really thought, and bounce those thoughts off of whatever had been happening in their classroom.
Now I'm a wildlife tracker (among other things) and it's remarkable to me how similar a process it is. It feels very fundamentally human to me to follow curiosity in this way. Thank you for this piece.
I’m so impressed and excited to see you continue on this journey, you’re an inspiration. I’m also self-taught in this same fashion, and began with the works of Mark Fisher, which lead me to Jameson, Jodi Dean, Zizek, and all the French and German thinkers I kept hearing about and never understanding. I have been encouraging my friends who feel stuck in the internet slop who want to get smarter to do this same thing, read read read and reread. I bet you’d LOVE “The Ignorant Schoolmaster” by Ranciere, the process is almost exactly what you describe here.
"It struck me then, perhaps for the first time in my life, that intelligence is really not about what you know. Intelligence is about whether or not you have the capacity to learn or be taught. It is perhaps also about curiosity." This matters so much, especially in these horrific conversations about AI and academia. It's not about content; it's about inquiry and practice and understanding. But so few people seem to want to make time for that.
I wholeheartedly agree. It’s noticing the curiosity, taking it seriously all the way through discomfort of not knowing, fumbling and constant failure. I find the practice to be most like sports or dance or anything where repetition and resilience is required to grow or discover a new chapter. And, as you said, it requires our most precious thing: time!
This is wonderful. After reading the AI essay in The New Yorker this morning, I felt so blue about the way we are failing to understand the deep pleasures of thinking and discovery. And this piece is the curative.
As an academic librarian, this article was a delight to read (and prompted me to reflect so much on the research process in general that I got off at the wrong train stop on my way into work today). In librarianship we call the strategy you describe of starting from a source and tracing footnotes, citations, references, etc. "the snowball method" and it's one I am always recommending to students and researchers just coming into a new topic area. It's one of the best ways to trace the evolution of a line of thought backward to its origins, and increasingly a way of even tracing it forward as more and more digital databases add "cited by" features to their metadata. Even JSTOR has that now! In any case, thank you so much for writing about this experience, it made my librarian heart swell three sizes like the grinch this morning.
Academic Librarians are my heroes!!!
I think this is my favourite of your newsletters so far. So much of it resonates for me, a scientist who also learned how to learn in graduate school and who learned how to extend that process of digging deeper and going down rabbit holes of references and related reading on other topics; I would emerge from the fog of hoovering up information with what felt like a literal new way of seeing and thinking, and it has served me well in MY amateur forays into Stuff I'm Interested In or Stuff I'm Annoyed By And Need To Better Understand (sometimes that latter is more motivating, which is probably a character flaw of mine!).
I 100% agree on the joys of being an amateur and an autodidact. We can read, learn, and enjoy just for the hell of it, and no one can stop us!
Thank you for this. I was trained as a literary critic but no longer work in the academy. I’ve been working through exactly what I do with the skills and capacity that critical training gave me and what relationship it should have to my writing, my voice. I used to think I needed to keep the two ways of making with ideas as far apart as possible, but recently I’ve been less absolute and that has been a good change. Reading this helped this morning.
Research is pretty much the most fun you can have!
Long ago I was fortunate to attend New College in Florida, where are teachers individually trained us to read original texts of criticism and to create the equivalent of your PDF methodology. I also trained in biochemistry. This learning has enriched my life, and continues to do so in retirement. I especially liked your description of evolving state of intelligence. Learning how to learn is priceless.
I always enjoy your writing on topics like these as they always create the desire in me to want to better my craft. I am trying to improve my review writing. For books that is. I have realized that it's much different now from when I started a few years ago. But I still think there's more to be improved upon. Will you say the same tips you mention above also apply for writing reviews? And what would you recommend as an entryway into studying to better myself at it?
This is so helpful in terms of both the why and the how for approaching learning, research, and writing. Time to make sure I've got enough printer ink for the heaps of pdfs I'm about to collect.
This is really good to read. I have ben completely derailed in writing. Stuck. This is uplifting, practical wise. Fantastically good 👍
This was so fun to read and incredibly generous. I needed the reminder to slow down and be more patient with my ideas. To enter a conversation. I also really needed this process broken down for me and wish I had had it many years ago when I was struggling in my MA program. Thank you.
this is such an excellent article!
your blog has been a really useful resource and a breath of fresh air in the last year--I found it when I was looking for advice on MFA statements of purpose, finally breathed a huge sigh of relief when I submitted my applications, then jumped back to full-blown panic when I actually got in and had to do the work I theorized about in my statements.
getting into the work has required much more deeply considered reading lists than I'm used to, and this is a really nice roadmap for the craft study I've been putting off. thanks for somehow firing off the perfect blog posts to cover my post-under pre-grad gap, you're a lifesaver.
This is beautiful. I need to print it out, because I can't wait to underline, annotate, and keep thinking about this.
What Davenport did you read? Every Force Evolves A Form? Or the Davenport Reader? This is a great map for students.
When I taught library research workshops (I was a university librarian for 18 years), that iterative process you describe was exactly what I tried to model for students. I was hoping, in the 50 or 110 or however many minutes their professor had granted me, to help them get past the "find 10 sources and get on with the assignment" that a lot of them had (quite understandably) fallen into. Because, as you say, reading those articles was an opportunity to figure out what they really thought, and bounce those thoughts off of whatever had been happening in their classroom.
Now I'm a wildlife tracker (among other things) and it's remarkable to me how similar a process it is. It feels very fundamentally human to me to follow curiosity in this way. Thank you for this piece.
I’m so impressed and excited to see you continue on this journey, you’re an inspiration. I’m also self-taught in this same fashion, and began with the works of Mark Fisher, which lead me to Jameson, Jodi Dean, Zizek, and all the French and German thinkers I kept hearing about and never understanding. I have been encouraging my friends who feel stuck in the internet slop who want to get smarter to do this same thing, read read read and reread. I bet you’d LOVE “The Ignorant Schoolmaster” by Ranciere, the process is almost exactly what you describe here.
Printing this, bookmarking it, saving to PDF, exporting to Evernote, embroidering it on a tea cozy for further reflection! Thank you!
I was with you right till exporting to Evernote, have to draw the line at embroidery