Possibly a word to the wise

[Squatchy]

So I get request on my pm and on facebook all the time from people wanting help.

I happy to help if someone is willing to learn. I get very short with people who ask for help and then mess stuff up by not listening to what I offer. Not that I know everything, but don't ask for help if your not willing to use the help.

I'm not complaining at all. This might have sounded this way. I wanted to post a small bit of a reply from a recent conversation this morning helping a new comer because I felt it was maybe good for lots of new comer's here. I wanted to encourage you all.


I won't mind helping you but please don't wear me out with things you can learn on your own. The best guys here are the one who study the old fashion way as if you were in college. This is how you "find your way". Learn by study and not just getting other peoples ideas. Most of what others will tell you is what has been repeated by many who have no real experience. And a good part of that is wrong or incomplete.

I will help you but I expect you will study first and then double check with me once you have come to your own conclusion. I know what I do because I have studied more than others. I'm here to help but I want you to study and learn as if I am not here. This is how it becomes your own.

I can teach you how to make mead in a couple weeks but all you will know is how to follow a recipe and that's almost worthless. If we study and understand "why" we do, and understand a process. Then no longer would you need to ask the "what". What, becomes understood and will reveal it's self once the "why is understood. If you work to learn the process and not the recipe you can figure the recipe on your own and then it's your mead. And your creating your own stuff, rather than only knowing how to follow a recipe. Someone once told me, "some people can learn to make good mead in a matter of weeks and some will never learn over the course of years"

I might seem less fun, but if you concentrate on learning to make a good traditional, this will up your game in everything you do. There is no place for faults to hide in a traditional. It will tell you right away if your process works or not. I here quite often. "I make pretty good (this or that's) but my traditionals never turn out very good."

I used to spend tons of money with extremely expensive teaching pros working towards getting my card for the PGA when I was younger. I once overheard a student say to one of my instructors. "I have a pretty good short game but my long game really falls apart".

The thing was with this guy was that the flaws in his short game didn't show up as much because of the short distances. When he took those same flaws to the tee box with his big dog his small "faults" were magnified many times over. He had them in both parts of his game but it manifested more in his long game. Once he learned to correct them in his short game practice, his long game fell right in place.

You may or not be a golfer, but I hope this analogy makes good sense and would inspire you to work on your short game on the practice range of traditionals. When you can putt and chip well it becomes very easy to "let the big dog eat".


Copied from Gotmead.com - Read More at:http://www.gotmead.com/forum/private.php?do=showpm&pmid=50400

 

[Masbustelo]

If your shoes are old and dirty it's tough to make birdie.

 

[cataclysmicvariable]

i dig it. alotta humans are quick to grab at wisdom without ever doin the knowledge. im not into golf, im into hiphop, if you know hiphop you know what is taught in supreme mathematics, 1+2=3. (1) knowledge (2) is wisdom (3) is understanding. you gotta do the knowledge to get the wisdom that will bring upon your understanding. you can't take another humans wisdom properly without first doin the knowledge yourself. how could you possibly know if your gonna fall off your game if you don't KNOW-the-LEDGE?? take it from the god Rakim ------> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPkWYTUiPTo word like son, sip the juice, peace to the true gods an earths!

 

[bernardsmith]

Squatchy, I guess I fundamentally agree with you although because I am also a teacher I may have a little more patience with people who think that they don't need to pay their dues. Developing a skill or knowledge demands both humility and practice and while as an academic I absolutely believe in the need to master what others who have come before me have learned I don't summarily dismiss the idea that one can sit at the feet of a teacher and learn. Some teachers are masters. The problem is that many, perhaps most, are not, but there are many ways to acquire mastery. That said, I am always amused when someone asks for a recipe rather than asks for help with processes... and your point about learning to make a traditional mead - a mead where there is no place to hide any of the faults is I think perhaps THE most important thing for anyone to master . It's the most important thing to master and it's the hardest thing to master. And it's as naked as a joke - If the audience doesn't laugh no amount of explanation will make it funny.

 

[beecarp]

We live in an age of information. Information that is as quick as a Google search. Surely someone will simply tell you what to do in most any given circumstance. Many of us mistake information with knowledge and in turn mistake knowledge with wisdom. You have to put in your time.
One of the things I have observed in reading posts at gotmead is that many people are simply afraid to make a mistake. And many others are trying too hard to not let people make mistakes. Strike a balance between jumping in and doing it and learning from others. Use the search feature and you will soon learn more than you probably need to know.
BTW thank you every one who does take the time to answer new-bees questions.

 

[bernardsmith]

I would add three letters to what you wrote beecarp - DISinformation is as quick as a Google search. When material is peer reviewed before being published crap can still see the light of day, but when anyone can publish and promote nonsense and can publish and promote the most outlying experiences as if they are typical or anecdotes as if those are data, then we are not in fact dealing with "information". So you need to know how to make sense of what you find on the interweb. It ain't all valid. And I can understand why folk are "afraid to make a mistake".. Quite apart from the money they have sunk into projects they have sunk time into them too. By that I don't mean that they have devoted months and months of their own time to making wine but that when they pitch a yeast they know that it may be six months or a year before they will have any good idea of whether what they started will flower into something wonderful or whether what they began months and months ago might be better added to the compost than poured into a glass. Personally, I am quite happy if what I am trying to make does not work just as long as I am able to learn from what I did but if what I did was done with no clear understanding of where I was aiming or what I was doing then having to wait months and months only to learn that my mead crashed and burned I too think I would be very uncomfortable at the thought of climbing back on the saddle