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[ 4 minute read ]
Prepare to Learn
Or learn to prepare.
For over a month now, I have had no vitamin supplements. I thrive on them. I have done mini-experiments that measure my mental acuity with and without them. Anyone can go back and see that my posts are way more creative months ago than they are today. I bought some yesterday. Another experiment over, one that included eating meat. I am now vegetarian again. Regardless of health issues, it uses less hot water and washing-up liquid.
The Summer break is over for many of us and now I need to focus. I am double-dosing for the next seven days. I am seeking the last 1%. That final piece could be the key that stitches everything together. I can't allow myself to deny that it might be found.
It is not my intention to persuade or convince anyone to take supplements; each to their own. In any case the one's I bought from the CO-OP are a bit suspect. In the ingredients is listed:
Sugar, Glucose Syrup, and Modified Maize Starch.
Really, sugars?
I am not a chemist or biologist, but sugar in vitamin supplements? Odd, I think.
Never mind, I am a sugar addict. I have to add sugar and salt to the baked beans I buy from the CO-OP. Wait, What? Yes, because I eat so little processed food I actually have to add salt to my food, and the quantity of sugar I add is tiny. I suspect the carbohydrates in a tablespoon of the beans far, far outweighs the sugar I add.
My doctor tells me I am not even pre-diabetic. I went to check because I would get fatigued after eating beans that I had soaked and cooked (carbohydrates). It turns out that you really do have to boil beans for a full ten minutes. I was kind of poisoning myself by cutting corners.
Recently, I forgot I was doing an online 'A' level course on Economics. I like pop-information, but thought I had better try to understand the formulas, charts and graphs. It is dull, but it might be necessary. If something is dull I tend to forget it or find a way to speed through it just to get to the other end. With the economics course I am using the soaking-in technique that utilises familiarity at its core. Often, I write on A3 and A4 size paper with marker pens and Blu-Tack them to my walls. If I didn't really understand something at the time I will pin it somewhere and carry on with a hope that something elsewhere marries up to the writing on the wall.
Sometimes, some of the stuff on my walls relate to a different subject, a bit like metaphors and similes. For example. the Conjunctive and Disjunctive Models Of Brand Evaluation in Marketing works well in understanding job interviews for an HR position. I also have the definitions of deductive and inductive reasoning on an A4 sheet.
I have a list of words and their meanings that I want to confidently use in sentences. I once had a conversation with a Lithuanian polyglot. She spoke English at probably C1 level on the CEFR scale. I told her that I would be able to speak English and she would not be able to understand me. She assured me that she was familiar with most English accents. I didn't pursue the conversation but felt sure that many people can speak English to me and I would not understand, and I think I speak English at C2, or close to it. One would only have to chuck 'commingle', 'sagacious', 'oleaginous', 'metastasis', or 'heterogeneity' into a sentence and I am lost. I kind of know them, but I am not confident enough with them to be able to be not frozen in thought for a moment, which would prevent me hearing the rest of the sentence. Job Done! Confused me.
When I was sixteen, I swallowed a thesaurus and liked the taste. Unfortunately, not everyone eats at the same restaurants as me.
My walls are disjointed mind-maps. I write questions on bits of paper and stick them up, because I know that I shall have to answer them within the next six months or so. I build scaffolding with words. I think some people call them notes, and I think the OU calls it a plan. I think scaffolding is slightly different. It makes it quite difficult for me to describe how I came about to write something though.
One of the most frustrating things for me in recent months, and currently, is that I cannot use the null hypothesis to test things in their negative form. I really like reading some facts and then trying to prove them wrong. At 'A' level I can sometimes do this, particularly in the common understanding of mental health and ill-health, in which I have fresh thoughts. Almost inevitably though, I cannot offer any alternative thinking, but I have a really good understanding of what is true and correct afterwards. I haven't been able to test anything like that for ages now. I miss it because it is so stimulating.
