Three cheers for wide learning, non-disciplinary focus, creative experimentation
I couldn’t resist sharing the results, published in Science, of a recent study that shows that in adults “world-class performance” is associated with limited discipline-specific practice, with increased multidiscilplinary practice, and with “gradual” progress when people are students. The study is a boost for those of us who believe in wide rather than...

Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center
for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon,
Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60. His new book is
Founder/Faculty Director, 