Group study is a slightly different beast. Study has mostly been a solitary activity for me in the past and in fact a way to seek solitude. It’s been fun learning to engineer group study and keep it deeper than idle forum chitchat.
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I think group study is best done in a peer learning way. Teachers generally hurt, not help. But the idea of a tutor though..l good fit for study. Tutors help you study, teachers do something closer to providing air cover and efficient strategic knowledge bombing.
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Closest I came to “tutor” was advising a bunch of undergrad theses at Cornell as a postdoc. It’s different from grad-level advising and classroom teaching. US grad TA-ing is also not like real tutoring, even though the sessions are called tutorials.
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It’s funny that tutoring, test-prep, and study all have negative valences today due to assimilation into late modern hyper-competitive industrial workforce prep. Historically these patterns seem to have been the core of educational culture itself, not a steroid-like ancillary.
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right? like liberation moves in peer study groups. it's a form of access to knowledge and to planning that is way more accessible than any institution can offer.
There’s a weird tension here though. You need solitary study time too. Depending on the subject it may be the core. Solitary study is to group study what reverie/reflection is to solitary study. There is a stack of modes here.
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We should write up this conversation somehow. Feels like a lot of the meaning crisis/general anomie around is a study-shaped hole in people’s lives.
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What separates studying-for-meaning from studying-as-wanking?
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What is studying-as-wanking? What’s the concern, I guess?
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I suspect only certain "types" of studying create any sort of value or meaning.
We don't want people spending hours putting pointless notes in a pointlessly complex note-taking app, all to write a Medium essay. #BestMindsOfMyGeneration
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I think studying to cultivate connoisseurship is the danger zone. Cultivating consumption taste over creative taste
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We should talk about connoisseurship, which I agree, is a different form of taste. Connoisseurs and students (as in studiers) often cross paths and get along.
I don’t know, I’m fine with it. All kinds of people live totally private lives sorting out their thoughts. The essay derives from assay, an in a trial or attempt. Journaling, cultivating interiority, private arts — these are all part of such traditions.
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