Well, I have some bad news to report this week. Unfortunately, I have not succeeded in mastering the first trick that I set out to accomplish, the disappearing penny trick. After trying and trying again, the penny just kept falling to the floor. Eventually, I "rage quit" and went off to another venture. There are currently two tricks I am trying to achieve, the penny behind the ear trick and a trick where I rub a penny into my arm, and it disappears (I will post the link if you would like to attempt the trick yourself). After failing over and over again, I have convinced myself that there is only 1 explanation, I suck at magic.
Next week, I will moving on to card tricks, where I know that I have at least a drop of skill. Many times I have been able to correctly guess someone’s card, even though everyone already knows the trick. I hope to be able to complete a trick my dad always pulls on me, a more advanced version of my petty allusion, but we’ll see what happens. I have a video lined up that I need to watch.
Back to this week. I still need to perfect my tricks and techniques, and I have to keep working! Stay tuned for more updates on my progress!
Commented on Will Franks, Noah Gilly’s and John Abrams blogs.
"Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street"
ReplyDeleteI'm sure, despite these problems, you'll still be able to succeed in learning some magic, you'll eventually be able to learn a couple of tricks and impress people. I'm curious, what kind of card tricks are you going to try and do? Or can you not tell us that?
I think that it is good that you have a plan of what tricks you will learn and when you will learn them. I think that it will be worthwhile to get your dad to help you master his card trick you are tryig to learn. This will help you more than using a book or website. If you can find teachers for the tricks you want to learn I think you will be able to learn better. Though you struglled with your last trick, hopefully you will have better success on tricks in the future. Good luck.
ReplyDeleteDo not give up, failure is always an option. Learn from your mistakes and move on. If you think the trick is truly above your level, find a new one, but only as a last resort. Like John said, if you can find someone to teach you, it would be much easier to learn than watching videos or reading books. I look forward to future updates, and cannot wait to see you preform some tricks.
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ReplyDelete(IDK why it removed it, weird)
DeleteLook, Noah, I hate to be “that guy” and look like a condescending jerk with a massive superiority complex, but you really REALLY have to step it up. I mean, come on man, the whole reason why you chose magic to study for 7 weeks, is because you genuinely want to study magic, because you want to take 7 weeks of your life and dedicate it to the art of illusion. You have obviously grown to hate magic after these first couple of weeks, or you thought it would be easy and it turned out not to be, or, maybe, you just aren’t trying enough. The point is it doesn’t matter, what matters is what you choose to do with the time you allotted yourself to learn magic, which thus far, hasn’t been used so well (as it appears to me). Just look at your blog post for this week, half of it is repeated information (literally word for word repeated), and the other half is nonsensical affirmations of progress, without any evidence/sources of research (if you have them man, then post them). This portion of the Genius project is worth 50% of the total grade, so please take it seriously. I’m sorry if this makes you hate me man, but I made the same mistakes you are making, and I really don’t want you to have to go through what I did my first year. For example, I once stayed up all night for two nights in a row. I’m not saying that I’m perfect, and that I won’t make more mistakes, I already have this year; I just hate to see you struggle for the same reasons I did in my freshmen year as a gifted student. Again, I’m really sorry to have to be like this man, but I’d hate to see you fail.
From,
Noah Gilly
(P.S. Pontificating is not something I like to do)
Noah, I find it quite funny that you decide to call your magic tricks "petty" and put yourself down like this. To combat Noah G's comment, I think that it's really cool that you are deciding to do magic. I have always truly wondered how people do it, and actually look forward to never learning the secrets. Not knowing how to do something is half the fun. Once you're the magician, and you know how to do a trick, you lose that sense of "Wow, how did he do that?" I sort of agree with Noah G, however. Don't put yourself down so much! Just keep pushing through it, and come out victorious!
ReplyDeleteNoah, I've found myself struggling with many things in my life before, and I know how you are feeling. I tried to learn magic when I was very little and I quit rather quickly. I think it is very wise of you to practice different tricks instead of continuing to struggle with the same trick. In my project, I have struggled with certain dribbling tricks, and I work on different ones. This tactic has helped me progress with my project and I think it will help you as well!
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