{"id":125,"date":"2010-03-28T13:39:16","date_gmt":"2010-03-28T20:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=125"},"modified":"2010-03-28T13:39:16","modified_gmt":"2010-03-28T20:39:16","slug":"trivial-pursuits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/trivial-pursuits\/","title":{"rendered":"Trivial Pursuits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I think a <em>true<\/em> passion for learning is one of the things that makes testers great. The best testers I know are always looking for concepts or viewpoints they haven\u2019t heard before and looking for opportunities to learn anytime they can.But it\u2019s usually not enough to just to <em>want<\/em> to learn \u2013 you need some skills on <em>how <\/em>to learn \u2013 on how to learn what <em>you don\u2019t know you don\u2019t know<\/em>. You have to be able to do a lot more than type things into a search engine. If you want to learn about something, search engine results are just the first clue of many that will take you on the learning journey. <\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve taken two classes in my life that I will forever be grateful for taking. The first was typing in 9th grade. I was awful in the class, but it\u2019s amazing how the basics have helped my productivity throughout the years (just ask anyone who\u2019s ever been annoyed with me for continuing to type while I carry on a conversation with them). The other class was a Methods of Research class in grad school. To be specific, the class was <em>Mus 510: Methods of Musical Research. <\/em>The class was entirely about how to find information\u2026and it was intense. My favorite part of the class (and the most hated for many others in the class) was the weekly \u201ctrivial pursuit\u201d exercise. Each week we were given a page of questions, and asked to find the answers (and note where we found them in a specified bibliographic style). This was 1992, so the internet wasn\u2019t really cranking along enough to help. Instead, the university library was our playground.<\/p>\n<p>So you can get an idea of what we went through, here are a sampling of some of the questions. There is no additional context \u2013 this is exactly \u2013 and only, what was written on our assignment sheet.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Whose death was \u201cbewailed\u201d in Thomas Campion\u2019s <u>Songs of mourning<\/u> in 1613? Where in <u>this<\/u> country will you find a <u>complete<\/u> copy?<\/li>\n<li>Who made two snare drums dated 1839 and 1841 now owned by the New York Historical Society?<\/li>\n<li>In what book will you find biographical notes on 53 song composers of India?<\/li>\n<li>Who first decided that A should be 440 vibrations per second?<\/li>\n<li>(and, my favorite\u2026) What does \u201cGabriel\u201d have between his teeth?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Every week we\u2019d have ten or so of these, and every week I\u2019d arrive at the library at 8:00am on Saturday when they opened, and wrap up just in time to leave at 5:00 when they closed. It was a long day, and it was mentally hard work, but I loved it. Little did I know that I was studying to be a software tester.<\/p>\n<p>What I learned was how to dig deep. Start with whatever you <em>think<\/em> is the keyword and look there \u2013 then look for citations or references. If there aren\u2019t any, look for unique phrases and search on those. During my eight hour Saturdays in the library, I learned that the first place you look for an answer is almost always only a clue for where you need to look next. <\/p>\n<p>Let me put it another way \u2013 if you <em>think<\/em> you found the answer on your first try \u2013 or think you know what something is truly about because you read the wikipedia article or someone\u2019s blog post, you will almost always be wrong. If you want to be a great tester, don\u2019t settle for surface area answers \u2013 dig deep and pursue!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think a true passion for learning is one of the things that makes testers great. The best testers I know are always looking for concepts or viewpoints they haven\u2019t heard before and looking for opportunities to learn anytime they can.But it\u2019s usually not enough to just to want to learn \u2013 you need some&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}