This text assumes a lot… cheeky text.

Contrary to its subtitle, this text assumes that you already know almost all of what it contains. In fact, it assumes that if your instructor handed you an assignment sheet for a college-level composition essay, in a few days (or less, if pressed) you could produce a reasonably competent essay to meet the goals of your college or university’s writing requirement. In other words, it assumes that you know some basic things about how to organize an essay, how to find resources to support the claims you make in an essay, and generally how to meet the needs of academic readers (which is to say, mostly your instructors, but soon a whole other crowd^[1] with different ideas about what counts as “good” in writing). It assumes that you know the essentials of formatting and citation styles such as MLA and APA, that you know how to use spell-check, and that you are fluent searching the net and using AI tools to make the whole project easier and less time consuming. This text assumes that you know^[2] how to play “the essay game.”

In short, you know a whole bunch and mostly don’t need to be taught “how to write.”

So why write a book then?

Good question. A primary premise of this text is that you should be in charge of your education, and that you should be working on ideas, projects, problems, and material that matters to you. A primary motivator for nearly all the great things that have happened in the world is that someone was pursuing their curiosity or passion, or trying to solve a problem that mattered to them or to people they care about. In fact, chapter xxx has an up-close look at motivation so more on that later.

In fact, it’s my conviction that great things happen when we “don’t know much.” Put another way, think of what a person can accomplish when they don’t know the limitations that supposedly exist with regard to a particular undertaking. There’s plenty of evidence that a primary limitation on certain kinds of scientific advancement is the belief that “we’ve arrived” or that “this is the way things have to be.” Thomas Kuhn wrote a whole book about it^[3]. One of Kuhn’s major arguments is that the old guard–that is, the scientists who arrived at their “sure” knowledge in their formative years–has to die out before new ideas can really take hold. Only then can the newer ideas have a chance of being heard, let alone explored and tested. Of course, it’s a lot more complicated than I’m letting on here, but the underlying idea is valid. Imaging what’s possible without being too hidebound to “the way things are” or “the way we’ve always done things” creates the genuine possibility of something great.

Further, obtaining mastery of a skill or subject is not an end goal, it’s a journey without a clear end. It’s a state of being in which growth, skill, “flow” (more on this later too), and the ability to contribute good things to the world are not limited to what and where we are today. Mastery is about growth and competence and a certain amount of reckless confidence.

A key to becoming and self-guided learner is becoming comfortable, to a certain extent, in the space between knowing and not knowing. Some parts of your previous education may have left you with a healthy fear of failure. That is, when the stakes are high (and they always feel high when the pressures of knowing your career and preparing for it begin in seventh or eighth grade), I’m betting that you generally take the safest road to finishing the school tasks you’re given. You might (consciously or unconsciously) ask yourself, “How much do I already know about this? How can I repackage that knowledge to meet the needs of this particular new task?” There is some benefit to considering existing knowledge in new frameworks, to be sure, but it doesn’t seem to me like a formula for real, meaningful growth of knowledge or skills. But if your grades (and your GPA and your class standing and your admission to the “right” college and your acceptance to the right professional or graduate program and your ability to have the life you dream of) are on the line, who has the stomach for taking chances?

And yet…

Real growth, real learning, real breakthroughs rarely happen in the comfort zone.

How can you create a space in which you are willing to take risks? where you are willing to learn from that greatest of all teachers, failure?

Making space for failure? Yes, making space for failure.

How about a sandbox, or a playground? What if that space is like a kindergarten classroom filled with paints, blocks, crayons, salt dough, and the not-yet-squashed-out-of-you ability to play… really play… with no limitations, no boundaries, no idea of what is or isn’t possible.

One of the things that young children generally lack that often gets in the way of us older folks is ego. I don’t mean the Freudian concept of ego, necessarily, but I don’t not mean that either (bad sentence… who cares?). More on that later.

For the purposes of this bit of the book, “ego” means the sense (and often worry) that we have about how our actions are viewed and judged by others. Tying one’s identity to GPA or test scores is a negative example of how ego can interfere with real education because the goal of grade-driven learners is almost always merely the grade itself. Such learners often asks themselves, “How can I complete this task with the most points and fewest risks?” or “How many points do I need on this assignment to maintain the grade I need?”

Or, they ask the instructor questions like “How long does this essay have to be?” or “How many points do you take off for X?” or (most often after the artifact has been graded) “How can I get 2.5 more points on row D of the rubric to get my grade for this assignment above the threshold (whatever it is) that I want?” None of those questions have anything to do with learning. They are wholly and solely about grades.

A student I’ll call Brandon came to my office around midterms. He was genuinely upset that he had so thoroughly duped into playing the game of school.