01-13-2011, 11:59 PM
Justin ...
Your head is ALMOST in the right place now. BUT ...
is not quite what I would call an attitude of "seeking to learn." The answer to the question, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" is ...
... "Practice, practice, practice!"
That means ... you do your best to make it be as good as you possibly can. Then you look at it ... you critique what you've done. You identify that which you believe you could have done better. Then ...
... you tear that part out and do it again ... better than you did the last time.
I'm 66 years old ... an "Old Guy" to you (I'm told I don't look that old.) But I can remember like it was yesterday when my grandfather, the guy that dropped out of school in eighth grade to work so the family would have enough money to live, and went on to become a machinist in a hosiery mill told me one day when, at age fourteen, I had the "good enough" attitude, "You always do the best that you know how to do! And should you ever have the opportunity to do it again ... do it better than you did the first time."
That's the system that will help you learn in this hobby. None of us on this forum were as good at this as we are now when we were sixteen. You cannot measure your work by holding it up to the work of people with 30 years experience. But maybe you might use what some of us older guys have done as a skill development objective ... a goal to be achieved.
When I joined this forum a year ago, I had not done any model railroading for twenty years. But I entered the Summer Structure Challenge more as a challenge to myself, an exercise to push myself to do the best I could do ... and then I got caught up in the "competition" and pushed myself to do better. I had a great deal of fun, I learned a few new things (mostly by watching the work of others on this fine forum) and I did better than I had ever done in the past. Now I will have to go back and upgrade some of the structures I had done years ago!
That's what you have to do ... to push yourself to do the best that you can do ... to please yourself!
Your head is ALMOST in the right place now. BUT ...
justinmiller171 Wrote:so I am not very concerned with how it looks, it is primarily just for practice.
is not quite what I would call an attitude of "seeking to learn." The answer to the question, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" is ...
... "Practice, practice, practice!"
That means ... you do your best to make it be as good as you possibly can. Then you look at it ... you critique what you've done. You identify that which you believe you could have done better. Then ...
... you tear that part out and do it again ... better than you did the last time.
I'm 66 years old ... an "Old Guy" to you (I'm told I don't look that old.) But I can remember like it was yesterday when my grandfather, the guy that dropped out of school in eighth grade to work so the family would have enough money to live, and went on to become a machinist in a hosiery mill told me one day when, at age fourteen, I had the "good enough" attitude, "You always do the best that you know how to do! And should you ever have the opportunity to do it again ... do it better than you did the first time."
That's the system that will help you learn in this hobby. None of us on this forum were as good at this as we are now when we were sixteen. You cannot measure your work by holding it up to the work of people with 30 years experience. But maybe you might use what some of us older guys have done as a skill development objective ... a goal to be achieved.
When I joined this forum a year ago, I had not done any model railroading for twenty years. But I entered the Summer Structure Challenge more as a challenge to myself, an exercise to push myself to do the best I could do ... and then I got caught up in the "competition" and pushed myself to do better. I had a great deal of fun, I learned a few new things (mostly by watching the work of others on this fine forum) and I did better than I had ever done in the past. Now I will have to go back and upgrade some of the structures I had done years ago!
That's what you have to do ... to push yourself to do the best that you can do ... to please yourself!
biL
Lehigh Susquehanna & WesternÂ
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." ~~Abraham Lincoln
Lehigh Susquehanna & WesternÂ
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." ~~Abraham Lincoln