Wed March 10 2010
From Visual Science Laboratory, March 8 2010
First up: "Live fast and die quicker." As Americans we seem to think that living brutal, jam packed 18 hour days is a smart, productive and reasonable way to live. But as my friend the cardiologist says, "The faster you live the quicker you die." And the irrational desire to do everything in your life in a rush also serves to kill your creativity. Example: You learn 50 things about lighting this week and intend to learn 50 newer things about lighting next week. This presumes that knowledge is some sort of commodity that can be put in your mental bank to be called on when needed. But the reality is that knowledge must be integrated and adjusted in your brain if you want to use it successfully. Each step in learning must build on a base of knowledge that has to be experimented with, tried, assimilated and personalized before it becomes worthwhile. You could drink an entire bottle of Vodka in one sitting but you might not admire the productivity gains that would ensue.
Students
I urge you to read Kirk's complete 'rant' on how he learned to be a photographer He makes the point above the knowledge has to be 'integrated and adjusted.' So true. Just yesterday afternoon a someone told me that person X was just great at 14 hour CPA reviews. I replied that very little information can be processed after the first four hours or so. The person quickly agreed but that is the way such reviews tend to be scheduled. People want to believe that knowledge and learning can be crammed into a short period of time. This is just not the case. I have used the metaphor of Mike Phelps' swim coach, 'get in the water' to urge students to immerse themselves in the world of finance and accounting. Interestingly Kirk is a swimmer and uses that analogy in his essay. Yes there is a lot of information on the web. But knowledge comes from slowly assimilating that information into a useful paradigm.
Professor Elam 
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