One concept that I’m toying around with right now is the idea that events are interpreted on three levels:

Plaintext: what people said they did, or, alternatively, what was concretely observed.

Subtext: what actually happened behind the scenes that you sort of have to guess at unless you were there (incomplete definition but you get the idea).

Context: where this event fits into the bigger picture of what’s going on.

When did we decide it was cringe to put effort into things?

Like, if I put in more than the bare minimum effort required to achieve something, does that make me an idiot, or does that make me someone who cared?

A thought I’ve been having is that the difference between a structured learning environment (like a course) and an unstructured learning environment (like a research internship) is that structured learning is really defined by what is said, whereas unstructured learning is really defined by the spaces between what is said, and by what you, the learner, fill those spaces in with.

I think this is why you have to be really careful about who you choose to learn from. It’s much easier for someone to imprint themself on you by subtly nudging you to think like them than it is for someone to succeed at telling you what to think.

I think being good at writing is about a lot more than being good at language and structure and mechanics and all. I mean, obviously those things are important – they’re the tools of the trade, I guess. But like any with other art form, I think curiosity and the ability to be observant are more important, and I love reading things written by people who clearly notice things.

I’ve said this before, but I think worrying about creativity is kind of overrated. I don’t think of myself as a particularly creative person. I usually feel like my ideas are obvious and inevitable, and I’m just stubborn enough to follow through with them more often than the average person. For example, one of my favourite projects I’ve done can be summed up by “I took pictures of my street for two years.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about mentorship lately, and I think one of my recent conclusions is that a new mentoring relationship doesn’t really become useful until after the first 4-6 months, because that’s how long it takes to build trust. Sometimes it takes even longer to build that trust. I’m not saying that the first few months won’t be useful at all – if you think they’re completely useless, that opinion is unlikely to change significantly – but you probably won’t be able to go very deep because you’ll still be vibe-checking each other at first.