(no subject)
Oct. 9th, 2004 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tylikI enjoy biology. Really I do. I think my problem is just that I generally dislike textbooks. (This is a problem of long standing. I loved international studies in part because we read real books, not textbooks. And... well, my history dealing with computer books is long and well recorded.) I'm getting better at managing this, really, but there's something a little... disappointing, I guess, in that I can motivate myself to get through boring readings by deciding that every subchapter (which is about the right length before my brain starts going numb) I can reward myself by doing something fun...
...like classical chinese translations.
It's the kind of thing that could make one reconsider one's academic aspirations. I mean, I can be tired and spacey and ill, and sit down and work through translations for hours in a state of near perfect contentment. If I try to read, say, an inane introductory chemistry text in the same state I'll have to kick myself every minute or so to keep from falling into "read but don't save" mode. (Assuming I'm not screaming at it for making lame jokes, or for failing to supply important and interesting bits of information. Not that I have a specific book in mind, of course...)
Of course, I can also sit down and read the driest accounts of, say, family organization in medieval villages in a certain time and place for hours, for fun, and find it enjoyable. And I can read real papers about real research that is being done, and usually find that pretty darned amusing too. Part of it has something to do with leverage -- I'm better at absorbing things when I have some feeling that I'll be able to apply the information in a useful way. (Or, if it's an area that for some random reason is a pet interest of mine, and I already have a fairly nice mental framework for the information, I can happily flesh out the existing structure...) So many textbooks render information into a bland, undifferentiated mass (kind of like mashed potatoes from a box). Information without texture or direction.
Huh. This is actually sharing several themes from the "what sucks about so many math textbooks" conversations... (And I like math.)
...like classical chinese translations.
It's the kind of thing that could make one reconsider one's academic aspirations. I mean, I can be tired and spacey and ill, and sit down and work through translations for hours in a state of near perfect contentment. If I try to read, say, an inane introductory chemistry text in the same state I'll have to kick myself every minute or so to keep from falling into "read but don't save" mode. (Assuming I'm not screaming at it for making lame jokes, or for failing to supply important and interesting bits of information. Not that I have a specific book in mind, of course...)
Of course, I can also sit down and read the driest accounts of, say, family organization in medieval villages in a certain time and place for hours, for fun, and find it enjoyable. And I can read real papers about real research that is being done, and usually find that pretty darned amusing too. Part of it has something to do with leverage -- I'm better at absorbing things when I have some feeling that I'll be able to apply the information in a useful way. (Or, if it's an area that for some random reason is a pet interest of mine, and I already have a fairly nice mental framework for the information, I can happily flesh out the existing structure...) So many textbooks render information into a bland, undifferentiated mass (kind of like mashed potatoes from a box). Information without texture or direction.
Huh. This is actually sharing several themes from the "what sucks about so many math textbooks" conversations... (And I like math.)
