Does Practice Make Perfect or Permanent? On Making New Mental Pathways
We hear how “practice makes permanent” but I attended a seminar for teachers about the brain, and two ideas stood out:
- Does it matter WHEN you learn or THAT you learn?
- Practice makes permanent.
The brain works in such a way that if we do something over and over, it gets deep into our brains. That goes for a number of behaviors– including writing, where, for example, we often think a comma is where we want a pause:
Henry David Thoreau reminds us: “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” Sometimes we need a new path to the waterfall.
If we make the same mistakes in our writing, we burn pathways in our brain that are convinced that doing it that way is the right way. Like using i.e. or e.g. correctly:
Practice makes permanent: permanent pathways in our brains.
That’s why it is so hard to change bad habits or fix mechanical errors in our writing: we must literally burn a new path in our brains! Since these pathways can be positive or negative, and they can reinforce doing something wrong or right, we should consider the patterns we make in our minds. What are the thoughts that dominate our brains? What have we planted in the soil of contemplation? What will we reap in our time of action? Have you noticed how stressful thoughts simply make you feel more stressed?
contemplate
This is why it can be so hard to break habits — whether it’s smoking, or spelling a word wrong, or forgetting that books need a shelf (i.e., big things like book or movie titles are underlined or in italics; e.g. Wings of Desire ). It’s why proofreading can be hard, as Taylor Mali shows us:
Has this ever happened to you?
You work very horde on a paper for English clash
And then get a very glow raid (like a D or even a D=)
and all because you are the word1s liverwurst spoiler.
Proofreading your peppers is a matter of the the utmost impotence.
This is a problem that affects manly, manly students.
I myself was such a bed spiller once upon a term
that my English teacher in my sophomoric year,
Mrs. Myth, said I would never get into a good colleague.
And that1s all I wanted, just to get into a good colleague.
Not just anal community colleague,
because I wouldn1t be happy at anal community colleague.
I needed a place that would offer me intellectual simulation,
I really need to be challenged, challenged dentally.
I know this makes me sound like a stereo,
but I really wanted to go to an ivory legal collegue.
So I needed to improvement
or gone would be my dream of going to Harvard, Jail, or Prison
(in Prison, New Jersey).
So I got myself a spell checker
and figured I was on Sleazy Street.
But there are several missed aches
that a spell chukker can1t can1t catch catch.
For instant, if you accidentally leave a word
your spell exchequer won1t put it in you.
And God for billing purposes only
you should have serial problems with Tori Spelling
your spell Chekhov might replace a word
with one you had absolutely no detention of using.
Because what do you want it to douch?
It only does what you tell it to douche.
You1re the one with your hand on the mouth going clit, clit, clit.
It just goes to show you how embargo
one careless clit of the mouth can be.
Which reminds me of this one time during my Junior Mint.
The teacher read my entire paper on A Sale of Two Titties
out loud to all of my assmates.
I1m not joking, I1m totally cereal.
It was the most humidifying experience of my life,
being laughed at pubically.
So do yourself a flavor and follow these two Pisces of advice:
One: There is no prostitute for careful editing.
And three: When it comes to proofreading,
the red penis your friend.
Mali. Taylor. “The the Impotence of Proofreading.” What Learning Leaves. Newtown, CT: Hanover Press, 2002. Print. (ISBN: 1-‐887012-‐17-‐6)
NOTE: If it’s not going well, talk to a friend or a professional. There are lots of free and low cost counseling services available in every community. In the meantime, check out these suggestions for coping; while designed for students at school, they can apply elsewhere too:
coping mechanisms
art predator 