Mistakes have played a big part in my learning, both academically and musically. In writing, mistakes and revision are what make for great writing. The more mistakes you find and fix, the better your writing will become. This has been very true of my learning to write. I remember a few particular papers in high school that I wrote, thinking I had done a great job. I turned them in to my mom, and when I got them back, they were marked up with corrections. Only when they were pointed out to me was I able to see how terrrible some of the wording sounded, all of the grammar issues, spelling errors, "messiness" in my ideas, and bad structure. Learning to fix these mistakes has made and continues to make me a better writer. So I guess you could say that it isn't the mistakes that teach you, but rather learning to fix them. This went over to math too. My mom was a good teacher in that she made me work, and work hard for my grade to ensure that I reall knew my stuff. In math, if I wasn' getting it, she wouldn't just stamp on a bad grade and move on. She would make me do the same or similar exercises over and over again until I got it and it clicked. This frustrated me for a while, but it ultimately led to mastery of the materials. Realizing the mistakes helped reveal my weaknesses so we could pinpoint and refine them until I had it all down. The same went for my music. My teacher would help me pinpoint my weak spots and we would work on them over and over until they were fixed. We wouldn't stop until all of the tranitions were smooth, the duds were gone, and the tone was perfect. As you can see, realizing your mistakes and learning to fix them is very important. Though they may sting for a little while at first, they bring beauty to the finished product and confidence in your own mastery.
Questions, nice comments, and ideas are great. The whole idea of this blog is to help me better my writing. Any positive feedback is welcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment