Today I discovered this message in my laptop's Notepad. It is possible that my roommate's friend left it there when she borrowed it to type a paper the other day, but I prefer to believe that my computer has gained self awareness and started wondering about the world around it, as all beings do. Specifically, wondering about pies.
In having to think about the last thing that I learned from scratch, I
something from scratch, is that simply learning something without having
any prior knowledge of it? Or is it learning something from the very
beginning, or with absolutely no help(a type of self-teaching?) I
am going to explore something that I learned on my own, without having
any serios prior knowledge of the subject.I believe that the
last thing that I truly learned from scratch was how to make a pie.
this last Thanksgiving I decided to attempt making Hannah's pumpkin
pie recipe. Most attempts I had made in the past to bake things usually
involved some sort of serious mishap, but in this learning process I
actually managed to succeed in my attempts and learn a lot in the
process. I didn't actually have anyone helping me in my attempts, and
the only aid I had was a basic pie recipe.Having never made a pie before
, I had no idea what to expect.I feel like this is an important factor
in learning anything new. The fact that you have no idea what to expect
from each step in the process, or with the finished product, kind of
makes it difficult to gauge your progress and to know if you're on
the "right track".
Especially in the instance of making a pie, this factor proved to be
one of the biggest challenges in the learning process. For example,
as I created the crust for the pie, I followed the recipe step-by-step
, putting the correct amount of each ingredient in the mix. Once I began
to mix everything together, the consistency of the mix became more apparent.
Since I didn't know what the expected consistency should be,I was constantly
questioning whether I had done everything correctly.The questioning put
me in a position where I wanted to try to add more to try to make the
consistency "correct". When I created the filling for the pie I went through
a very similar thing. Once I made the filling it was very runny and kind of
like a orange soup more than a pie filling. I got pretty bummed out
when I noticed how soupy it was and had decided that the pie was
probably going to be a bust. I asked my mom for advice and she had no
clue, so I went with my instinct and decided to bake the pie anyways,
adding just enough extra to make the mix a bit less soupy,but not too much
to make it be overly thickened by the cooking process. I didn't
really have any idea how much it would thicken in the baking process, but
I decided to just go with my instinct and assume that it would really
thicken up in the baking and cooling process.
As it turns out, my instincts were correct. The pie turned out really well.
In fact, it was pretty delicious. In this learning process I found
that having confidence in your decisions and in the directions you were
given was key to having success. I also found that having confidence
in your intuition can make the difference between the project turning
out perfect, slightly less than perfect or a total disaster. If I had
told myself that the pie was completely done for when it turned out
soupy and decided to scrap it I would have been so out of luck because
the pie turned out wonderfully. the other thing that I learned that when
it comes to following directions, you should trust in certain things, like
the amounts of basic ingredients such as flour, sugar, etc. In contrast, I allowed
myself enough freedom to play a bit with other ingredients such as
spices, ginger and other special ingredients.As a result, the pie turned out
stable and "correct", but it also was unique and exactly as spicy, sweet and "gingery"
as I wanted it to be
