TOol Academy

A good way to start an essay about something specific is to write its definition. Tool: an implement... blah blah blah fucking blah. There could be no worse way to start an essay. Start with the definition from a dictionary? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING? There is nothing more boring, simple minded just flat out uninspired you could do. Yet that's what so many of the teachers and books and other bullshit used to teach people about writing say. The first time I heard that when I was a lot younger I was doing some boring assignment and I immediately latched onto it. I thought, "this is great: this will eat up a little space, its something concrete I can do, its easy. But why would I ever want to do that or read something with the dictionary definition in it? I would never do that unless it was for some school related bullshit.". Thats mostly what being a student was like for me, a very boring psychology experiment where i tried to figure out what i had to do to get a good grade. The only problem was I couldn't have cared less. It seemed like it was 99% bullshit and huge waste of my time. completely uninspiring. So I always ended up with B's. I would do well then be like, "i can't do this anymore" then i would get a bad grade and be like fuck that, i'm way better then that and then i'd turn it back on". iI just assumed since everyone else was doing and my parents had me doing it that i had to do it. I didn't have any goal, i just knew it was bs and tried to focus on other stuff that made me happy. There were plenty of other kids who felt similar to me, we were all terrible students but we had a great time. The funny part is the kids who did well seemed to be for the most part incredibly unoriginal. Everything seemed like a test of your ability to copy, with some pleasant exceptions. Its interesting to note how many successful people come from bad colleges or no college. You would think its simple, the more talented and well equipped the person the better the college and the better result in the real world. While i'm sure many people are able to leverage their great college into a good career, but when you look at the extremely successful, the kind of success you can't fake, the correlation seems to disappear. but what do i know, i have absolutely no research to suggest this, just my own worthless observations. Anyway, back to tools and their love of the dictionary....Why would you include everyone in the most basic part of your research? GIVE ME SOMETHING NEW, anything, even if it sucks. If you need help getting a grasp on what something means; just brainstorming it, then by all means look it up! But as a general strategy of putting it into your work, its ridiculous. But thats what tools do, they copy, copy, copy. They like things that are easy and fit with their world view and they couldn't be more convinced that they are right. No second guessing here. They are desperate for structure, without it they are literally nothing. Everybody's got a little tool in them. You laugh when everyone is laughing even if you don't know why. You make fun of someone because everyone else is. That's all fine until you get out into the real world. In most parts of the adult world being wrong is costly and not realizing it is too. Thats why you find so many tools in the lower ranks of any profession.

Another thing that I noticed was the emphasis a lot of teachers seemed to put on grammar. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why they would grade you down for grammar mistakes. Reading any great story, the part i liked was the story: the plot, the setting, the characters. I wanted to know how to do that part! Alas, the confused looks I got when asking questions related to that from certain teachers. I could write my ass off, come up with this fantastic story and get a D because of my grammer! "great story, you just need to work on your grammar". WOW (by the way, there are consequences for grades given, the comments are only useful to me, not those who will judge me later on!). Don't get me wrong, grammar can screw up your story. The reader has to stop to figure out what your trying to say and it messes up the stream of consciousness or they just misunderstand it. But I don't need that explained to me. Thats like explaining i need to write things down for people to be able to read them. or that i have to use real letters, not shapes i make up. I GET IT. thats the easy part, if i want to do the bare minimum on my grammar it WILL COST ME. BUT IF I DON'T WRITE A EXCITING, FUN, INTERESTING ETC. story then I am in much worse shape in terms of meeting my goal. 90% of the focus seemed to be on the things with 10% of the importance and vice versa in school. Just to drive home my point, its very easy to understand now that computers can automatically correct my grammar that grammar is not that important. But imagine before computers, the emphasis on grammar must have been ridiculous. To be honest, I never learned how to improve my story telling other than by story telling. I can't imagine exercising my imagination, its certainly too abstract (in our society) to base a class on and expect people to pay for it. Teachers need their salaries, principles need there's as well, so why risk it. You need to learn grammar and most importantly you need to recognize its importance in the story telling process when teaching it. If you can't grasp that, then you really shouldn't be teaching.

Unfortunately when your younger its hard to understand why these people act the way they do or if your doing something wrong. Well kids its not you, its them, so beware the tools they're everywhere and they will dull you if you don't keep your distance!