It's Just A Tool, Silly
May. 23rd, 2008 09:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akirluI hate outlines. I hate feeling obligated to get the format right, with Roman numerals for thesis statements and capital letters for support statements, and Arabic numerals for supporting facts, and all the rest. I hate having to stuff my thoughts into little boxes that get ticked off as you move down the outline. It's so restrictive and confining! It's like having to wear a straight-jacket while swimming the crawl.
Hell, I hated the whole process of learning to generate numbered bibliography cards and numbered note cards, and then using the notecards to make up outlines in order to write reports that followed the order of the outline. All that regimentation squeezed absolutely every ounce of joy out of both learning new stuff for the report, and out of the process of writing it. I learned to hate formal research in the fifth grade, and I don't think I ever fully recovered. Because I hated them, I have never used notecards or outlines very effectively, or indeed at all when it wasn't mandatory. To me, all that meticulous documentation felt essentially like additional make-work I had to do over and above writing the report, not at all like aids to organizing my writing.
But you know what? I don't have to use them. They're just tools. And any given tool won't be right for every job or every hand. That's my big insight this morning. It just struck me: I am not a bad person for hating outlines. They are just the wrong tool for me. This idea was so very liberating, that it might actually free me to using outlines, and note cards, at times when they would actually help. Because I don't have to use them.
Ordinary, sane persons will be nodding in a soothing, trying-not-to-appear-patronizing sort of way about now, because ordinary sane persons will have known all along that formal outlines are not some sort of moral obligation. But to me, it's huge.
So maybe now I'll get some use out of this handy tool they taught me in grade school. And that's a good thing, because as an adult, I just don't have much call for my cunning ability to make salt maps of Hawaii.
Hell, I hated the whole process of learning to generate numbered bibliography cards and numbered note cards, and then using the notecards to make up outlines in order to write reports that followed the order of the outline. All that regimentation squeezed absolutely every ounce of joy out of both learning new stuff for the report, and out of the process of writing it. I learned to hate formal research in the fifth grade, and I don't think I ever fully recovered. Because I hated them, I have never used notecards or outlines very effectively, or indeed at all when it wasn't mandatory. To me, all that meticulous documentation felt essentially like additional make-work I had to do over and above writing the report, not at all like aids to organizing my writing.
But you know what? I don't have to use them. They're just tools. And any given tool won't be right for every job or every hand. That's my big insight this morning. It just struck me: I am not a bad person for hating outlines. They are just the wrong tool for me. This idea was so very liberating, that it might actually free me to using outlines, and note cards, at times when they would actually help. Because I don't have to use them.
Ordinary, sane persons will be nodding in a soothing, trying-not-to-appear-patronizing sort of way about now, because ordinary sane persons will have known all along that formal outlines are not some sort of moral obligation. But to me, it's huge.
So maybe now I'll get some use out of this handy tool they taught me in grade school. And that's a good thing, because as an adult, I just don't have much call for my cunning ability to make salt maps of Hawaii.
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