Wow! In my former life, I was an accountant. I was down to the wire - I had completed all my course requirements except one Statistics class that I was avoiding like the plague. I couldn't sit for my comprehensive exams until to took that class and passed it. One problem - math was my worst subject. I know, it doesn't make sense that I was in the home stretch to become an accountant. I've never been one to turn away from a challenge. My classwork on the course didn't count for anything; it was all 100% on my final exam. I had three attempts to pass the exam. If I failed a third time, I was out of the program and FIVE years of hard work and studying went down the drain. I studied like a crazy woman for the exam and failed once. Studied like a crazier woman and failed twice. I simply did NOT comprehend the material.
Then I had a BRILLIANT idea! I used the "parrot method." A parrot can say, "Two plus two equals four." but it doesn't understand what it means. All I had to do was MEMORIZE the ENTIRE TEXTBOOK and the examples in it. It was only 1,100 pages long and I had four months to do it, so I started my task right away. By the time I wrote the exam a third time, I had the book memorized. I passed an got an "A" on the course! I didn't understand a single thing on the exam.
My friend, I don't understand a single thing you've posted. :) But you sure brought an old memory back into my awareness. Some of us are mathematicians and some of us aren't. You obviously are making up for my lack of ability in that department. Thank goodness we aren't all the same! Great job.... whatever it is that you posted, I appreciate it because it is beyond my scope of understanding.
Considering your story, I have to ask, why did you want to be an accountant? Was it the fame or the glamour? But memorizing a *math* textbook, impressive!
I dearly wish I spoke another language than English. Studied Spanish in junior high, and nada. Studied German for four years in high school, and nein. I have the same thing with other languages that many people have with math. Somehow, there's just no traction. Spin your wheels all you like, you're not moving forward.
So, I think there is something to the notion of brains being wired different ways. That said, teaching has a lot to do with it. Most people were taught math and science by teachers who didn't understand the material and certainly didn't love it or communicate its wonder. Given a good teacher, and an abiding interest, I think anyone could learn almost anything. The thing about math is that most people (rightly, I suppose) don't see any value in learning it. My interests make it a necessity, plus I kinda love it.
Good question. Consider the era… I had “good girl syndrome”. I wanted to study journalism, but my parents highly discouraged me from doing that because “there was no money in journalism.” My mother was a woman who was way ahead of her time in corporate America (Canada) and recognized that women were “breaking the glass ceiling” in accounting, so she encouraged me to take accounting. I skipped a grade in school, so I was barely 17 when I graduated and I was still influenced by my parents’s decisions a lot. So like a “good girl” I took accounting. I had my own private practice for 12 years. Somewhere in that time frame I asked myself why I was doing it because, truth be known, I was good at my work, but I hated it. When we moved to Texas I closed the Accounting Ledgers once and for all. The experience has come in handy as I’ve been in private practice as a counselor for 30 plus years. I know how to run a business and keep it afloat. I specialize in working with Professionals and Corporate Executives because I can speak their language.
As for another language. I took a sabbatical for my 50th birthday and went to Switzerland for a French Immersion program. I told French for 8 years in school and learned nothing useful. At least I put some pieces together living in Switzerland for a while. Then I started learning Spanish by doing immersion programs. Spanish is EASY compared to French. I’m not fluent, but I can stumble my way through anything.
As for math… I married an Engineer. He’s the math and science half of our equation.
BTW… Accounting didn’t require anything beyond basic math knowledge.
You probably could speak another language as well, if you were taught properly. The methods that are used are so confusing it is no wonder people think it’s difficult. There actually are a few programs that make sense. And, I do believe you about the math teachers. The absolute WORST teacher I ever had in school was my junior and senior year math teacher. Horrible teacher!
Ah, you were interested in journalism. Explains your love of writing. I'd say you'd arrived. Judging by your blog, you're a travel journalist! Private practice for 12 years. Impressive, but good for you for following your heart and getting where you have.
I had a vaguely similar experience in that I wanted to join the Navy or Air Force when I got out of high school, but my parents didn't want their child going off to Vietnam. Given my technical background even then, I probably wouldn't have ended up on the front lines as a grunt, but who knows. The term SNAFU comes from the military. (For the record, I'm generally a supporter of law enforcement and our military, although I'm not blind to their excesses and failures. I wouldn't want to live in a world without them, though.) Anyway, the 'rents wanted me in college (as opposed to a body bag), and that certainly led to the good life I've led, but I often regret not having served. But I know what it's like respecting your parents' wishes.
As it turned out, I ended up in corporate America, first as a field tech (the guy who showed up to fix the copier, though I worked on different types of machines) then transferred to HQ to provide technical support nationally. Eventually, I got into software design (my college minor). While I would have been, I believe, more fulfilled by a path in the arts (filmmaking was my college major), I still enjoyed the path I took. I've been blessed to have always enjoyed what I did for a living. (And further blessed in always having been ABLE to make a living.)
Your husband might like my geekier posts, but I'm not sure how much of that I'm going to do here. I've indulged my inner geek throughout the 13 years of my other blog (it'll be 13 July 4th). All the teacher and preacher genetics in my family tree push me towards posts that explain things -- it's one of my perceived values as a person, being able to teach. (My excuse is that it's not "man 'splaining' if it's teaching.) I'm going to throw some geeky stuff out there to see if it gets any interest, but I'd like to treat Substack as a reboot and reach for a more informal kind of blogging without having to explain stuff all the time (which is hard). Break a 40-year writing habit!
Hey, looks like you're doing Substack for real now! Can't comment on the math, as you know, but what do you think of the formatting limitations here vs. Wordpress?
I'm pretty severely underwhelmed -- it all seems very crude. Images apparently can only be centered, no wrap-around text, no HTML tweaking, can't even use HTML character codes for special symbols, Greek letters, and whatnot (some of it can be copy-pasted in if one has something to copy from).
If I'm Goldilocks, WordPress is too big, but Substack is too small. Don't know if "just right" even exists -- long-form blogging is a dying craft.
So, don't know how much I'll end up doing here. I'm leaning towards 'not much.' I did this post mainly to check out the Latex feature (for all the math equations). It's simpler to use here (much simpler to edit the equation, in fact) but severely limited compared to WP.
I thought you might feel that way. I get a bit frustrated at times with the centered images, since it makes emails look very long. On the other hand, sometimes the wrap-around text comes out looking terrible on a phone, at least that's what I've noticed on WP.
Overall, for me it's a debate about simplicity vs. awesome formatting. You get used to having all sorts of fun tools to play with, and suddenly they're gone. (I was getting into that fun "before/after" slider doohickey on photos over at WP.) But there is something appealing to me about the simplicity on Substack. It sort of reminds me of school uniforms—when everyone's forced to look the same, or almost the same, you have to get creative to stand out.
If you want to meet new people, Substack is it. WP is stagnating. I wasn't meeting anyone new there, and I felt like it was hard to discover new blogs too. I'm meeting interesting people here for sure. But you have to look for them beneath the Twitter people, people who have never blogged before and act like famous people who don't respond to comments, people who go around subscribing but never reading anything because they want you to subscribe back, people on Notes looking for follows and likes, the usual spammy tactics that WP was full of as well back in the day (I recently purged half of my subscribers here to get rid of all the ghost subscribers clinging to my imported CV file like barnacles). There's definitely a writer-centric self-promotion vibe around here that I could do without, but plenty of philosophy blogs too. OH, I'm thinking if you start putting up posts here, you should see a big difference in traffic if you turn on paid subscriptions. I suspect the Substack algorithms really do pump up blogs with those turned on. Makes sense, that's how they get paid! But do you get better quality subscribers? I doubt it.
So as usual, it's a give and take. I came here because it's free and there are no ads. The BS is at a whole new level here, but I think it's worth it to meet new people. The chat feature is nice too.
The simplicity requires a different mindset, but I agree it has value and appeal. It's a good analogy, the school uniforms. True creativity and imagination stand out when there isn't a layer of style cloaking things. I think that's a big part of why low-budget films done with skill and creativity become the cult gems they do. They really do show off the skill of their making. Big budget and CGI masks a lot of laziness.
It's a cute twist that WP goes through pains to force everyone into a school uniform on its (damned) WP Reader despite how the user's post looks on their blog. They want a homogenized feed, which Substack has not just by default but despite blogger's best efforts!
You know, I've already gotten a little sense of community here that hasn't existed at WP in years. I'm not big on social media in the usual sense. Blogging and some YouTube is about it on that front (and the latter is mostly for educational content).
I'm still in "seeing how it goes" mode. Being free with no ads is nice. I kind of like having my own domain (logosconcarne.com), but it wouldn't be surprising to me if Substack had that capability, too. I may try treating this blog more as an informal weblog "dear diary" kind of thing -- a mode I've sought on WP but somehow never been able to pull off. I get stuck in the more formal publishing-articles mode. Even this post evolved beyond my intent, which was for a much briefer more literal "cheat sheet" overview of the exponent rules.
But I guess it's true that your writing goes where it goes.
Yes, you can have your own domain, or at least I recall seeing it in "settings" somewhere, though I believe you have to pay for it.
I'll be curious to see how it goes with your less formal blog here. Substack posts feel more formal to me than WP, and I suppose that may be the real difference between the "newsletter" and blog post. That's something I miss about WP, the ability to just write crap without fussing. But then again, there's no reason why it must be so formal around here. It just seems to be the case.
I hadn't picked up on the formality here, but I haven't been here long or gotten too deeply into it. I'm not even clear on the "newsletter" aspect. I have seen the orientation towards podcasts and videos.
I think my first posts here will be hugely experimental. Exploring the platform and seeing what works for me. Might be interesting to have something more "dear diary" and social. What I'm not seeing clearly is splitting blogging between two similarly defined blogs. It's hard enough for me to post anything to my programming blog. Dividing general interest stuff between two platforms makes my head hurt. 🤕
I guess by 'formal' I mean people feel the need to send out posts on a strict schedule and they stick to a certain 'brand', etc. I'm also getting the sense that over here, readers expect you to write about one and only one topic, and if you start straying from that, they'll unsubscribe. Which is fine by me, because I don't intend to specialize or restrict myself to a handful of topics just to avoid boring someone who never reads much of what I say anyway. Life is too short for that!
As for the 'newsletter' aspect, that's a good question. I'm not sure I've been able to fully wrap my mind around the term. I think of newsletters as emails sent out through a service like Mailchimp, and those would be mainly marketing emails you get from companies you subscribe to that tell you about deals and such. They would certainly have a 'brand' and wouldn't be at all personal. But why should a blogger want to imitate that? Ick! And yet, there is that marketing-branding thing going on with some of the more popular blogs here, so there must be something to it.
What's going on over here is mostly blogging, though some of it is really a form of publishing (small mags like ADC), and other things besides. If I taught flamenco dance lessons or guitar lessons, I could totally see using this as a platform to organize my classes and deal with payments, especially since you would have greater inter-Substack discoverability (similar to the way WP used to be).
Here's where you would certainly know more than I do: I've heard "SEO" (whatever that entails) is better at WP. So if you do decide to do two platforms, maybe that will have something to do with how you decide to divide your posts?
Wow! In my former life, I was an accountant. I was down to the wire - I had completed all my course requirements except one Statistics class that I was avoiding like the plague. I couldn't sit for my comprehensive exams until to took that class and passed it. One problem - math was my worst subject. I know, it doesn't make sense that I was in the home stretch to become an accountant. I've never been one to turn away from a challenge. My classwork on the course didn't count for anything; it was all 100% on my final exam. I had three attempts to pass the exam. If I failed a third time, I was out of the program and FIVE years of hard work and studying went down the drain. I studied like a crazy woman for the exam and failed once. Studied like a crazier woman and failed twice. I simply did NOT comprehend the material.
Then I had a BRILLIANT idea! I used the "parrot method." A parrot can say, "Two plus two equals four." but it doesn't understand what it means. All I had to do was MEMORIZE the ENTIRE TEXTBOOK and the examples in it. It was only 1,100 pages long and I had four months to do it, so I started my task right away. By the time I wrote the exam a third time, I had the book memorized. I passed an got an "A" on the course! I didn't understand a single thing on the exam.
My friend, I don't understand a single thing you've posted. :) But you sure brought an old memory back into my awareness. Some of us are mathematicians and some of us aren't. You obviously are making up for my lack of ability in that department. Thank goodness we aren't all the same! Great job.... whatever it is that you posted, I appreciate it because it is beyond my scope of understanding.
Considering your story, I have to ask, why did you want to be an accountant? Was it the fame or the glamour? But memorizing a *math* textbook, impressive!
I dearly wish I spoke another language than English. Studied Spanish in junior high, and nada. Studied German for four years in high school, and nein. I have the same thing with other languages that many people have with math. Somehow, there's just no traction. Spin your wheels all you like, you're not moving forward.
So, I think there is something to the notion of brains being wired different ways. That said, teaching has a lot to do with it. Most people were taught math and science by teachers who didn't understand the material and certainly didn't love it or communicate its wonder. Given a good teacher, and an abiding interest, I think anyone could learn almost anything. The thing about math is that most people (rightly, I suppose) don't see any value in learning it. My interests make it a necessity, plus I kinda love it.
Good question. Consider the era… I had “good girl syndrome”. I wanted to study journalism, but my parents highly discouraged me from doing that because “there was no money in journalism.” My mother was a woman who was way ahead of her time in corporate America (Canada) and recognized that women were “breaking the glass ceiling” in accounting, so she encouraged me to take accounting. I skipped a grade in school, so I was barely 17 when I graduated and I was still influenced by my parents’s decisions a lot. So like a “good girl” I took accounting. I had my own private practice for 12 years. Somewhere in that time frame I asked myself why I was doing it because, truth be known, I was good at my work, but I hated it. When we moved to Texas I closed the Accounting Ledgers once and for all. The experience has come in handy as I’ve been in private practice as a counselor for 30 plus years. I know how to run a business and keep it afloat. I specialize in working with Professionals and Corporate Executives because I can speak their language.
As for another language. I took a sabbatical for my 50th birthday and went to Switzerland for a French Immersion program. I told French for 8 years in school and learned nothing useful. At least I put some pieces together living in Switzerland for a while. Then I started learning Spanish by doing immersion programs. Spanish is EASY compared to French. I’m not fluent, but I can stumble my way through anything.
As for math… I married an Engineer. He’s the math and science half of our equation.
BTW… Accounting didn’t require anything beyond basic math knowledge.
You probably could speak another language as well, if you were taught properly. The methods that are used are so confusing it is no wonder people think it’s difficult. There actually are a few programs that make sense. And, I do believe you about the math teachers. The absolute WORST teacher I ever had in school was my junior and senior year math teacher. Horrible teacher!
Ah, you were interested in journalism. Explains your love of writing. I'd say you'd arrived. Judging by your blog, you're a travel journalist! Private practice for 12 years. Impressive, but good for you for following your heart and getting where you have.
I had a vaguely similar experience in that I wanted to join the Navy or Air Force when I got out of high school, but my parents didn't want their child going off to Vietnam. Given my technical background even then, I probably wouldn't have ended up on the front lines as a grunt, but who knows. The term SNAFU comes from the military. (For the record, I'm generally a supporter of law enforcement and our military, although I'm not blind to their excesses and failures. I wouldn't want to live in a world without them, though.) Anyway, the 'rents wanted me in college (as opposed to a body bag), and that certainly led to the good life I've led, but I often regret not having served. But I know what it's like respecting your parents' wishes.
As it turned out, I ended up in corporate America, first as a field tech (the guy who showed up to fix the copier, though I worked on different types of machines) then transferred to HQ to provide technical support nationally. Eventually, I got into software design (my college minor). While I would have been, I believe, more fulfilled by a path in the arts (filmmaking was my college major), I still enjoyed the path I took. I've been blessed to have always enjoyed what I did for a living. (And further blessed in always having been ABLE to make a living.)
Your husband might like my geekier posts, but I'm not sure how much of that I'm going to do here. I've indulged my inner geek throughout the 13 years of my other blog (it'll be 13 July 4th). All the teacher and preacher genetics in my family tree push me towards posts that explain things -- it's one of my perceived values as a person, being able to teach. (My excuse is that it's not "man 'splaining' if it's teaching.) I'm going to throw some geeky stuff out there to see if it gets any interest, but I'd like to treat Substack as a reboot and reach for a more informal kind of blogging without having to explain stuff all the time (which is hard). Break a 40-year writing habit!
Heh, yeah, accounting is arithmetic, not math. 😁
Hey, looks like you're doing Substack for real now! Can't comment on the math, as you know, but what do you think of the formatting limitations here vs. Wordpress?
I'm pretty severely underwhelmed -- it all seems very crude. Images apparently can only be centered, no wrap-around text, no HTML tweaking, can't even use HTML character codes for special symbols, Greek letters, and whatnot (some of it can be copy-pasted in if one has something to copy from).
If I'm Goldilocks, WordPress is too big, but Substack is too small. Don't know if "just right" even exists -- long-form blogging is a dying craft.
So, don't know how much I'll end up doing here. I'm leaning towards 'not much.' I did this post mainly to check out the Latex feature (for all the math equations). It's simpler to use here (much simpler to edit the equation, in fact) but severely limited compared to WP.
I thought you might feel that way. I get a bit frustrated at times with the centered images, since it makes emails look very long. On the other hand, sometimes the wrap-around text comes out looking terrible on a phone, at least that's what I've noticed on WP.
Overall, for me it's a debate about simplicity vs. awesome formatting. You get used to having all sorts of fun tools to play with, and suddenly they're gone. (I was getting into that fun "before/after" slider doohickey on photos over at WP.) But there is something appealing to me about the simplicity on Substack. It sort of reminds me of school uniforms—when everyone's forced to look the same, or almost the same, you have to get creative to stand out.
If you want to meet new people, Substack is it. WP is stagnating. I wasn't meeting anyone new there, and I felt like it was hard to discover new blogs too. I'm meeting interesting people here for sure. But you have to look for them beneath the Twitter people, people who have never blogged before and act like famous people who don't respond to comments, people who go around subscribing but never reading anything because they want you to subscribe back, people on Notes looking for follows and likes, the usual spammy tactics that WP was full of as well back in the day (I recently purged half of my subscribers here to get rid of all the ghost subscribers clinging to my imported CV file like barnacles). There's definitely a writer-centric self-promotion vibe around here that I could do without, but plenty of philosophy blogs too. OH, I'm thinking if you start putting up posts here, you should see a big difference in traffic if you turn on paid subscriptions. I suspect the Substack algorithms really do pump up blogs with those turned on. Makes sense, that's how they get paid! But do you get better quality subscribers? I doubt it.
So as usual, it's a give and take. I came here because it's free and there are no ads. The BS is at a whole new level here, but I think it's worth it to meet new people. The chat feature is nice too.
The simplicity requires a different mindset, but I agree it has value and appeal. It's a good analogy, the school uniforms. True creativity and imagination stand out when there isn't a layer of style cloaking things. I think that's a big part of why low-budget films done with skill and creativity become the cult gems they do. They really do show off the skill of their making. Big budget and CGI masks a lot of laziness.
It's a cute twist that WP goes through pains to force everyone into a school uniform on its (damned) WP Reader despite how the user's post looks on their blog. They want a homogenized feed, which Substack has not just by default but despite blogger's best efforts!
You know, I've already gotten a little sense of community here that hasn't existed at WP in years. I'm not big on social media in the usual sense. Blogging and some YouTube is about it on that front (and the latter is mostly for educational content).
I'm still in "seeing how it goes" mode. Being free with no ads is nice. I kind of like having my own domain (logosconcarne.com), but it wouldn't be surprising to me if Substack had that capability, too. I may try treating this blog more as an informal weblog "dear diary" kind of thing -- a mode I've sought on WP but somehow never been able to pull off. I get stuck in the more formal publishing-articles mode. Even this post evolved beyond my intent, which was for a much briefer more literal "cheat sheet" overview of the exponent rules.
But I guess it's true that your writing goes where it goes.
Yes, you can have your own domain, or at least I recall seeing it in "settings" somewhere, though I believe you have to pay for it.
I'll be curious to see how it goes with your less formal blog here. Substack posts feel more formal to me than WP, and I suppose that may be the real difference between the "newsletter" and blog post. That's something I miss about WP, the ability to just write crap without fussing. But then again, there's no reason why it must be so formal around here. It just seems to be the case.
I hadn't picked up on the formality here, but I haven't been here long or gotten too deeply into it. I'm not even clear on the "newsletter" aspect. I have seen the orientation towards podcasts and videos.
I think my first posts here will be hugely experimental. Exploring the platform and seeing what works for me. Might be interesting to have something more "dear diary" and social. What I'm not seeing clearly is splitting blogging between two similarly defined blogs. It's hard enough for me to post anything to my programming blog. Dividing general interest stuff between two platforms makes my head hurt. 🤕
I guess by 'formal' I mean people feel the need to send out posts on a strict schedule and they stick to a certain 'brand', etc. I'm also getting the sense that over here, readers expect you to write about one and only one topic, and if you start straying from that, they'll unsubscribe. Which is fine by me, because I don't intend to specialize or restrict myself to a handful of topics just to avoid boring someone who never reads much of what I say anyway. Life is too short for that!
As for the 'newsletter' aspect, that's a good question. I'm not sure I've been able to fully wrap my mind around the term. I think of newsletters as emails sent out through a service like Mailchimp, and those would be mainly marketing emails you get from companies you subscribe to that tell you about deals and such. They would certainly have a 'brand' and wouldn't be at all personal. But why should a blogger want to imitate that? Ick! And yet, there is that marketing-branding thing going on with some of the more popular blogs here, so there must be something to it.
What's going on over here is mostly blogging, though some of it is really a form of publishing (small mags like ADC), and other things besides. If I taught flamenco dance lessons or guitar lessons, I could totally see using this as a platform to organize my classes and deal with payments, especially since you would have greater inter-Substack discoverability (similar to the way WP used to be).
Here's where you would certainly know more than I do: I've heard "SEO" (whatever that entails) is better at WP. So if you do decide to do two platforms, maybe that will have something to do with how you decide to divide your posts?