Reading about expertise this week made me work on automaticity. Last week when I worked on my first pearl knotted bracelet the feeling was a bit overwhelming. Hold the pliers! Pull! No, untie the know! It is too far away! Hold the awl! Pull! No, too soon! Aghhhh!
So I thought why don't I spend this week perfecting the procedure I've learnt last week. There aren't that many steps! It should be fine! The cognitive demands of pearl knotting will change for the better. The burden to my working memory will reduce (Martinez, 2010), and I will be able to learn new techniques quicker once I master holding the tools and tiny beads and pears.
You know how it all makes sense when you listen to the teacher or an expert explaining the procedure? You have no questions! You are ready to go! You even think some pieces of advice are kinda silly (shhh!) so you neglect them (sort of) when you start working on your own! That's what happened this time. I had plans to replicate my success from last time (this time for a present) and try another pearl type.
End result? Complete disaster!
So I thought why don't I spend this week perfecting the procedure I've learnt last week. There aren't that many steps! It should be fine! The cognitive demands of pearl knotting will change for the better. The burden to my working memory will reduce (Martinez, 2010), and I will be able to learn new techniques quicker once I master holding the tools and tiny beads and pears.
You know how it all makes sense when you listen to the teacher or an expert explaining the procedure? You have no questions! You are ready to go! You even think some pieces of advice are kinda silly (shhh!) so you neglect them (sort of) when you start working on your own! That's what happened this time. I had plans to replicate my success from last time (this time for a present) and try another pearl type.
End result? Complete disaster!
The knots were too obvious (read: ugly!) because the pearls were too small (just like the expert explained in the video!). But the greatest disaster of them all happened at the very end when I only had one step left - to put the buckle. My needle got stuck with the silk inside the last pearl, which made my whole project totally useless. (Need I say, just like the expert warned might happen if you do not match the right tread size with the pearl hole size.)
How curious! As if my procedural knowledge was organized in a completely interrupted and illogical manner. My "big ideas" and principles, as the book calls them, turned out to be irrelevant (Did I miss the main points? Or do I lack experience to be able to form them properly?). I tried avoiding leaning on superficial attributes in my sense-making, but it seems that the relations between concepts in my mind were formed in an inefficient way.
Hence, I started all over again. :( I cut piece by piece of the silk to liberate the pearls. I tried applying my newly gained knowledge to correct my mistakes from the previous mistakes and I made a pretty decent bracelet. Was it perfect? Well, it had one tiny mistake. The buckle does not lock properly, but hey! Progressing from making a completely useless and ugly bracelet to making an almost useful bracelet, I think deserves to be called a success.
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