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Learning Hands
The miraculous loop between our hands and brain
“July Writing Challenge,” The Pillionaire Diaries https://medium.com/@parvathij084
When I started my PhD, I was one of the few students who had a practical background. I had spent years as a jeweller and a metalsmith, and at the time most people would be considering retiring, I decided to move on to getting postgraduate degrees.
While I worked, I often wondered about where my profession came from. Who were the first metalsmiths? How did people figure all this out? It was that curiosity that eventually led me to degrees in archaeology with a specialisation in Bronze Age metalworking.
I was an unusual student because of my background. Outside of a couple of others, most of the people in the postgrad programs had no experience other than being a student. They had gone from kindergarten to a PhD programme without ever having worked in a field or practised a craft related to their studies. So many students just repeated what they read and wrote new variations on the extent literature.
As someone coming from a practical background in metalworking, I realised that some of the literature was wrong. It was written by academics who had never held a hammer in their lives, but wrote authoritatively about working with metal.
