Tuesday Flashback: Study skills

In seventh grade, I took a study skills class at Bay Trail Middle School, or as students called it, “Gay Jail.” To this day, my study skills teacher remains a vague blur of large glasses, a long, possibly pleated skirt, and some “womp-womp-wahh-ing” like a Peanuts cartoon.

What I do remember was writing a short research paper on Jim Morrison, including what I’d learned (from an Encyclopedia, maybe?) about him getting arrested for “nudity,” as I put it. My teacher didn’t appreciate my including that detail, and I remember she gave me a “C.” Fine, so she wasn’t a fan of the Lizard King!

Jim Morrison aside, not until my junior year in high school did I begin to figure out how to use “study skills” to make my writing more organized. My manic English teacher paced around the classroom as he told us we would begin writing research papers. Then, after giving us the assignment, he told us to include quotes, but first to write down each quote on an index card with the author’s name, publication name, and (most importantly) what we planned to say about the quote on the back of the card.

Index cards! So simple.

Yes, it’s old-school and ridiculously time-consuming, but this method (and waking up at 4 am every day to write), was also how I started and finished my 33 1/3 series book.

This is not to say that because I use index cards that I am capable of perfect writing all the time. In fact, most of my writing (especially early drafts & I’m sure this blog entry) are riddled with mistakes.

In an increasingly artificially “intelligent” world, simple tools like index cards, pens, and notebooks are becoming more and more obsolete. Mistakes are too. But mistakes prove we’re still learning.

So, make mistakes in your writing. It never hurts to remind yourself (and those around you) that you’re still human.