Film Studies/Why I created "Film Studies"

You might be surprised to learn that every edit made on Wikiversity or Wikipedia is permanently stored. The original version of Film Studies was created on January 20, 2008. You can see that version at Special:Permalink/207048, under a new pagename: Film Studies/The birth of Hollywood Cinema. There are now well over 2 million permalinks stored in Wikiversity, but Permalink/207048 was written after about 207 thousand edits had been made. Instead of deleting that original version of Film Studies, it became the first "essay" hosted by my "call for essays".

I did not create the current version of Film Studies because I like movies, although I do like movies. I watch them when I am too tired to work. It seems I tired a lot, because I watch a lot of movies, especially now that I am retired. I created Film Studies in order to help students learn to write. Before retiring, I taught physics, math, and astronomy at the college level. If a physics professor thinks writing is more important than science or math, you should infer that learning to write is important.

One of the reasons I learned to speak Russian was to see what it is like to think in another language. I discovered that I don't think in any language. In my opinion, learning to write doesn't help you think. But it helps you tell others what you think. In college, I majored in physics because I loved math, and math was so easy that I wanted something that was more difficult for me. But writing is never easy for me. I rarely enjoy writing, unless I am passionate about what I want to say. My essay is about my experiences in Russia in 1984, but its not really about Russia. Instead, it's about how people of different cultures and viewpoints think and communicate. Thoughtful and precise communication almost always requires that you carefully state your ideas in writing.

You can read my essay at Socialism/Is it a thing of the left? It's not really about Socialism or politics. It's about how and why we write essays.

--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 03:34, 7 January 2023 (UTC)