On 11/20/2015 12:26 PM, -MIKE- wrote:
On 11/19/15 10:19 PM, Bill wrote:
I was reading Chris Pyes, book, "Woodcarving Materials, ...", Vol. 2,
recently and he brought up the topic of "Beginners Syndrome". He's
wrote that it's common enough phenomenon that he thought he should
say something about it. Apparently it's characterized by reading a
lot of books and buying a lot of tools, and not making so many wood
chips. I haven't bought "that" many tools, but I can still identify a
little with the poor suckers he's talking about. So instead of
hovering over the new Marc Adams (School of Woodworking) catalog,
that I just received, like I usually do (they are rather out of my
budget anyway), I scanned it more quickly without hovering,
determined to get my shop in order : ).

It has started to occur to me just how much stuff is sold to people,
in various hobbies or pastimes, that might similarly suffer from
"Beginners Syndrome". Just regard this as a PSA message. You might
possibly know someone suffering from BS.... ; ) Toss them a hammer
and a nail and ask them to make the knife--and to get on with it!
When one has work that takes all that you'll give it (a feeble
excuse!), it's all too easy to fall into the BS trap! I think I need
to learn how to cut a pizza...into 7 slices... ahhhh!! Maybe 6
slices...okay.

Bill

I think I still have a box full of woodworking books, from our move.
Whenever I'd get a new tool (lathe!) I would get books and read up on
techniques and safety, etc. There's a healthy amount to it, but yes,
one can get immersed in reading and learning about it so much that they
never end up doing it.

Reminds me of the tenured professors where I used to work. I called
them "professional students," because many of them never had any actual,
real world, work experience. They went from high school to college, to
grad school, to being a doctoral candidate, to teaching and never did
anything else in their lives. (Think: the professor from "Back To
School" with Rodney Dangerfield.)

After a few decades of hands-on experience, I now often see a book or
website giving "expert" advice on how to do something and it's often
either wrong or very inefficient. I remember learning these "wrong"
ways and also remember figuring out the *better ways* by simply doing it
instead of reading about it.

Nothing wrong with learning by reading/watching. But learning by doing
seems to be a much more fruitful and enjoyable endeavor.



What is scary is those people who have the advanced degrees and no
practical experience think the world should run as it says in the book
and the way academia thinks it should.

When they are forced into practical situations, they are not only
useless, but can become dangerous to others when trying to make the
practical world comply to the books and academia's ideas.

We have many examples of these people trying to run things in the US today.