Can somebody tell me...

fogcity
Fri, 08 Jan 2010 02:59:39 +0000

I second the advise from the responders – read, write, attend art/cultural events whenever you can. Also key is discipline in doing this, and a process for feedback.

Some additional suggestions:

(1) Read the New York Times daily – all sections.
(2) Find one or two monthly magazines that are in your field of interest – possibly one in foreign affairs, another more literary. Subscribe to these if your library doesn’t, and read them regularly.
(3) Find a mentor … perhaps a school teacher, a family friend, a faculty member at a (reasonably) local college, and set up regular meetings. These can be by phone.
(4) Ask the mentor for “critical” writing assignments. These can be on current events, historical events, and even on modern science. These should be reasonably long (10-15 pages at time, 3-5 pages at others). Write, and have your mentor review them – very very critically. Rewrite them, and then move on to the next one. Do this at least monthly.
(5) Take the hardest courses available at your local school. Take no shortcuts. Do as well as you possibly can.
(6) Learn at least one language to the point of developing reading fluency, and reasonable writing fluency. If your school’s language programs are insufficient, then search out a correspondence course – i.e. language CDs, etc.

With the internet you can broaden the program suggested above. You may be able to get access to assignments from strong academic schools anywhere in the world.