Watson and Sherlock are once more dominating pop culture, the ancient detective rebooted and reborn into the modern world in movies and series all over the world. Unfortunately it’s gone the way bringing someone back from the dead in a movie usually goes: their personality appallingly simplified to the most basic drives, and you wouldn’t want to spend too long in a room with them.
But they can help you approach your exams!
Many people think being smart means being Sherlock, some super-intellect who simply looks at things until they see the solution. Someone who sees equations appear in the air around your head, special effects swirling around until they dissolve in a flash of inspiration. Problems don’t work like that. Exams don’t work like that. Almost nothing on Earth works like that, and even the few things that do still need the second step: simply doing the work.
So you don’t want to be a Sherlock. Besides, the problem with movie and Cumberbatch Sherlocks is that they’re useless jerks. The original Sherlock was supercilious and spoiled, but he never actually went out of his way to annoy other people. Unfortunately our present versions were created after Breaking Bad, reality TV, and lots of other ways we’ve seen television turn from “exciting stories” into “annoying idiots are assholes to each other.”
The most impossible thing in today’s Sherlock series isn’t his incredible intellect, or how he magically attracts psychopaths whose only evil scheme is “do things that will look really dramatic on a TV show”. The most impossible plot point is anyone working with Sherlock at all. He might solve every case, but here’s the thing: police don’t actually get bonuses for finishing every job. And if an overworked officer has the choice between “be bullied by jerk who’ll interrupt all my work for months” or “another one unsolved”, it’s going to be the second then off home for dinner and TV every time.
So it’s a good thing you don’t want to be a Sherlock! That’s where Watson comes in. Watson doesn’t know what the answer is, but he does know what to do right now. And that’s always the real solution. Just get started and get on with it. Hard work and keep going. Every type of exam problem has standard steps at the start, things like “draw the diagram”, “break up the force components”, “choose a point to take the moments around”. Know those and you don’t need a flash of unlikely inspiration, because you’ve already got the marks. And if your method doesn’t give the final answer you’ve still scored most of the part marks. While a show-off Sherlock who doesn’t instantly see the answer is suddenly an idiot standing there staring at nothing at all.
But they can help you approach your exams!
Many people think being smart means being Sherlock, some super-intellect who simply looks at things until they see the solution. Someone who sees equations appear in the air around your head, special effects swirling around until they dissolve in a flash of inspiration. Problems don’t work like that. Exams don’t work like that. Almost nothing on Earth works like that, and even the few things that do still need the second step: simply doing the work.
So you don’t want to be a Sherlock. Besides, the problem with movie and Cumberbatch Sherlocks is that they’re useless jerks. The original Sherlock was supercilious and spoiled, but he never actually went out of his way to annoy other people. Unfortunately our present versions were created after Breaking Bad, reality TV, and lots of other ways we’ve seen television turn from “exciting stories” into “annoying idiots are assholes to each other.”
The most impossible thing in today’s Sherlock series isn’t his incredible intellect, or how he magically attracts psychopaths whose only evil scheme is “do things that will look really dramatic on a TV show”. The most impossible plot point is anyone working with Sherlock at all. He might solve every case, but here’s the thing: police don’t actually get bonuses for finishing every job. And if an overworked officer has the choice between “be bullied by jerk who’ll interrupt all my work for months” or “another one unsolved”, it’s going to be the second then off home for dinner and TV every time.
Watsons don’t know what the answer is, but they know what to do right now.
So it’s a good thing you don’t want to be a Sherlock! That’s where Watson comes in. Watson doesn’t know what the answer is, but he does know what to do right now. And that’s always the real solution. Just get started and get on with it. Hard work and keep going. Every type of exam problem has standard steps at the start, things like “draw the diagram”, “break up the force components”, “choose a point to take the moments around”. Know those and you don’t need a flash of unlikely inspiration, because you’ve already got the marks. And if your method doesn’t give the final answer you’ve still scored most of the part marks. While a show-off Sherlock who doesn’t instantly see the answer is suddenly an idiot standing there staring at nothing at all.
