A Note From the Author
A Note From the Author
A Note From the Author
Hi everyone, Jiarui here!
To start, I want to share with you a movie dialogue that has stayed with me throughout these years: when Neils Bohr speaks to a young Oppenheimer, in the dim light of an experimental physics study.
"Algebra is like sheet music. The important thing isn't can you read music? —
it's can you hear it?"
I believe the same is true of writing. Everyone can understand the English language, grasp its fundamental architecture, and acquaint themselves with its bricks and beams. Yet an essay is a skyscraper that does not come with a construction manual. All you can rely on is some mix of intuition, feeling and thought — to not only command the language, but create blends of ideas that are uniquely yours.
That's the music.
We've all written an essay and racked our brains over how to come up with another point that's not repetitive. Behind that is the simple truth that your thoughts shape your writing, often much more than you think. Yet most enrichment resources nowadays seem to focus on how to write, or at best what to write, instead of how to think. That is why I started The Generalist.
In my schooling years, I had the great privilege of being taught by two teachers – my Lit teacher and my GP teacher – who I think really changed my life. I had honestly expected academic writing to require, both literally and figuratively, a textbook approach: internalise facts from the textbook, and use them to advance arguments that are "proven to work".
Yet they did something which to this day, I find hard to believe: changing the way I think — or, now that I actually understood why, how to think for myself. They showed me that the perspectives or ideas which we’ve lived with all our lives are far from common sense, that they can be questioned, reworked, even dismantled. They showed me that there is a strange happiness in casting off the invisible shell which our mind had lived in, and in being ‘reborn’ each day. They showed me that beyond what we read in school, there are works out there, written by those with fascinating thoughts and ideas, that allow us to access a whole new world.
Today, I hope to share the same experiences I had with you. I have also experienced, firsthand, how valuable that kind of independent, intellectual skepticism remains in the AI-saturated rhythm of life today. That is why I chose to design this platform not as a mere catalog of fancy-sounding content to be directly plugged into an essay, but as a place where you can constantly challenge the way you think about the world, and while doing so, find an intellectual space and a writing voice that belong only to you.
What we think determines what we write, but even before that — what we read shapes what we think! Here is where you’ll embark on this complete journey; first, by learning to read and understand the kind of GP thinking that is at once sharp, complex and insightful. Next, by polishing your own instincts and thinking processes through learning from sample essays, arguments and analyses. And finally, by having the opportunity to compose that music yourself and have it reviewed in great detail – all on this platform.
All in all, I believe General Paper (GP) itself is actually less of an academic subject than a checkpoint to evaluate the way you think; the essay which you see at the end of 1.5 hours will simply be the natural accumulation of weeks, months or years of consistent, critical thinking and knowledge intake — just like how weightlifting or musical practice adds up over time.
Each piece in The Generalist is written slowly, and meant to be read slowly. We'll be dealing with complex ideas, nuances, paradoxes, cross-disciplinary connections, and many unexpected ways of sense-making. Things will inevitably get tough, but remember that nothing good in life comes easy. You got this!
Finally, beyond matters of content mastery, I just want to say that it’s perfectly natural to feel afraid when picking up a pen and facing a blank piece of foolscap paper. Even today, I sometimes am afraid of having no idea what to write, that the attempt would be bad, or that I might not manage everything: the time, the argumentation, the language. That fear, I suspect, never fully leaves. But you will learn, with time, to write in spite of it — and eventually, when it becomes indistinguishable from anticipation, because of it.
I'm glad you found your way here.
Stay as long as you like.
Hi everyone, Jiarui here!
To start, I want to share with you a movie dialogue that has stayed with me throughout these years: when Neils Bohr speaks to a young Oppenheimer, in the dim light of an experimental physics study.
"Algebra is like sheet music. The important thing isn't can you read music? —
it's can you hear it?"
I believe the same is true of writing. Everyone can understand the English language, grasp its fundamental architecture, and acquaint themselves with its bricks and beams. Yet an essay is a skyscraper that does not come with a construction manual. All you can rely on is some mix of intuition, feeling and thought — to not only command the language, but create blends of ideas that are uniquely yours.
That's the music.
We've all written an essay and racked our brains over how to come up with another point that's not repetitive. Behind that is the simple truth that your thoughts shape your writing, often much more than you think. Yet most enrichment resources nowadays seem to focus on how to write, or at best what to write, instead of how to think. That is why I started The Generalist.
In my schooling years, I had the great privilege of being taught by two teachers – my Lit teacher and my GP teacher – who I think really changed my life. I had honestly expected academic writing to require, both literally and figuratively, a textbook approach: internalise facts from the textbook, and use them to advance arguments that are "proven to work".
Yet they did something which to this day, I find hard to believe: changing the way I think — or, now that I actually understood why, how to think for myself. They showed me that the perspectives or ideas which we’ve lived with all our lives are far from common sense, that they can be questioned, reworked, even dismantled. They showed me that there is a strange happiness in casting off the invisible shell which our mind had lived in, and in being ‘reborn’ each day. They showed me that beyond what we read in school, there are works out there, written by those with fascinating thoughts and ideas, that allow us to access a whole new world.
Today, I hope to share the same experiences I had with you. I have also experienced, firsthand, how valuable that kind of independent, intellectual skepticism remains in the AI-saturated rhythm of life today. That is why I chose to design this platform not as a mere catalog of fancy-sounding content to be directly plugged into an essay, but as a place where you can constantly challenge the way you think about the world, and while doing so, find an intellectual space and a writing voice that belong only to you.
What we think determines what we write, but even before that — what we read shapes what we think! Here is where you’ll embark on this complete journey; first, by learning to read and understand the kind of GP thinking that is at once sharp, complex and insightful. Next, by polishing your own instincts and thinking processes through learning from sample essays, arguments and analyses. And finally, by having the opportunity to compose that music yourself and have it reviewed in great detail – all on this platform.
All in all, I believe General Paper (GP) itself is actually less of an academic subject than a checkpoint to evaluate the way you think; the essay which you see at the end of 1.5 hours will simply be the natural accumulation of weeks, months or years of consistent, critical thinking and knowledge intake — just like how weightlifting or musical practice adds up over time.
Each piece in The Generalist is written slowly, and meant to be read slowly. We'll be dealing with complex ideas, nuances, paradoxes, cross-disciplinary connections, and many unexpected ways of sense-making. Things will inevitably get tough, but remember that nothing good in life comes easy. You got this!
Finally, beyond matters of content mastery, I just want to say that it’s perfectly natural to feel afraid when picking up a pen and facing a blank piece of foolscap paper. Even today, I sometimes am afraid of having no idea what to write, that the attempt would be bad, or that I might not manage everything: the time, the argumentation, the language. That fear, I suspect, never fully leaves. But you will learn, with time, to write in spite of it — and eventually, when it becomes indistinguishable from anticipation, because of it.
I'm glad you found your way here.
Stay as long as you like.
Hi everyone, Jiarui here!
To start, I want to share with you a movie dialogue that has stayed with me throughout these years: when Neils Bohr speaks to a young Oppenheimer, in the dim light of an experimental physics study.
"Algebra is like sheet music. The important thing isn't can you read music? —
it's can you hear it?"
I believe the same is true of writing. Everyone can understand the English language, grasp its fundamental architecture, and acquaint themselves with its bricks and beams. Yet an essay is a skyscraper that does not come with a construction manual. All you can rely on is some mix of intuition, feeling and thought — to not only command the language, but create blends of ideas that are uniquely yours.
That's the music.
We've all written an essay and racked our brains over how to come up with another point that's not repetitive. Behind that is the simple truth that your thoughts shape your writing, often much more than you think. Yet most enrichment resources nowadays seem to focus on how to write, or at best what to write, instead of how to think. That is why I started The Generalist.
In my schooling years, I had the great privilege of being taught by two teachers – my Lit teacher and my GP teacher – who I think really changed my life. I had honestly expected academic writing to require, both literally and figuratively, a textbook approach: internalise facts from the textbook, and use them to advance arguments that are "proven to work".
Yet they did something which to this day, I find hard to believe: changing the way I think — or, now that I actually understood why, how to think for myself. They showed me that the perspectives or ideas which we’ve lived with all our lives are far from common sense, that they can be questioned, reworked, even dismantled. They showed me that there is a strange happiness in casting off the invisible shell which our mind had lived in, and in being ‘reborn’ each day. They showed me that beyond what we read in school, there are works out there, written by those with fascinating thoughts and ideas, that allow us to access a whole new world.
Today, I hope to share the same experiences I had with you. I have also experienced, firsthand, how valuable that kind of independent, intellectual skepticism remains in the AI-saturated rhythm of life today. That is why I chose to design this platform not as a mere catalog of fancy-sounding content to be directly plugged into an essay, but as a place where you can constantly challenge the way you think about the world, and while doing so, find an intellectual space and a writing voice that belong only to you.
What we think determines what we write, but even before that — what we read shapes what we think! Here is where you’ll embark on this complete journey; first, by learning to read and understand the kind of GP thinking that is at once sharp, complex and insightful. Next, by polishing your own instincts and thinking processes through learning from sample essays, arguments and analyses. And finally, by having the opportunity to compose that music yourself and have it reviewed in great detail – all on this platform.
All in all, I believe General Paper (GP) itself is actually less of an academic subject than a checkpoint to evaluate the way you think; the essay which you see at the end of 1.5 hours will simply be the natural accumulation of weeks, months or years of consistent, critical thinking and knowledge intake — just like how weightlifting or musical practice adds up over time.
Each piece in The Generalist is written slowly, and meant to be read slowly. We'll be dealing with complex ideas, nuances, paradoxes, cross-disciplinary connections, and many unexpected ways of sense-making. Things will inevitably get tough, but remember that nothing good in life comes easy. You got this!
Finally, beyond matters of content mastery, I just want to say that it’s perfectly natural to feel afraid when picking up a pen and facing a blank piece of foolscap paper. Even today, I sometimes am afraid of having no idea what to write, that the attempt would be bad, or that I might not manage everything: the time, the argumentation, the language. That fear, I suspect, never fully leaves. But you will learn, with time, to write in spite of it — and eventually, when it becomes indistinguishable from anticipation, because of it.
I'm glad you found your way here.
Stay as long as you like.
Best,
Jiarui
Best,
Jiarui
Best,
Jiarui