To me, continual learning is as necessary as relieving myself in the bathroom except it's not as messy when I don't do it. I can still be easily overwhelmed by the pursuit of knowledge, but, if I'm not increasing my intelligence in some systematic way every day, I feel like I am stagnating. In order to stave off this mental stagnation, I've created a personal learning program where I study a specific topic each month. The topics I would ultimately like to cover include:

• Literature
• Writing
• Math
• History
• Geography
• Chemistry
• Physics
• Biology
• Medicine
• Foreign languages
• Art
• Music
• Health and Physical Education
• Economics
• Philosophy
• Psychology
• Accounting
• Finance
• Marketing
• Computer Science
• Law

For the remainder of the year I plan to work on Geography, Music (playing the piano), and Computer Science. This last month I studied English Literature and writing and learned a few esoteric tidbits.

A useful technique I learned was how to construct long, yet useful and effective, sentences using the cumulative sentence structure, a technique that is used by nearly all good writers but that somehow eluded my notice up till now. Essentially, cumulative structure starts with a base clause (such as "Cumulative sentences can take any number of forms") and adds modifying phrases that add more detail. For example: "Cumulative sentences can take any number of forms, detailing both frozen or static scenes and moving processes, their insistent rhythm always asking for another modifying phrase, allowing us to achieve ever-greater degrees of specificity and precision, a process of focusing the sentence in much the same way a movie camera can focus and refocus on a scene, zooming in for a close-up to reveal almost microscopic detail, panning back to offer a wide-angle panorama, offering new angles or perspectives from which to examine a scene or consider an idea."

Cumulative sentences appear to go against the basic writer's rule of "Keep It Simple Stupid", and it seems to me that their use should be limited in business communications. Done correctly, though, cumulative sentences play an important role in elegantly adding rich, interesting detail. It is also important to vary your sentence structure and length, and to be aware of sentence rhythm.

In the literature department (not the literal literature department in college), I took an overview of the Western Literary canon. Literally. At least in one sense of the word. The word has been so corrupted by those who like to use it to emphasize their claim that it is difficult to tell what is really meant. Anyhow, I added a few great books to my list including Shakespeare's plays, Lord of the Rings, and Moby Dick and learned a couple of interesting facts:

• “Bible” means book and is likely named after a city called Biblos from which writing materials were shipped.
• Socrates never wrote anything. His teachings and life were written about by students like Plato. He ensured that he would be found guilty in his trial so that he could be a scapegoat (paying for the actions of one of his students).

Now, I feel mildly unprecocious by admitting this, but I also learned the difference between a clause and a phrase, the difference being that a phrase is a group of words that doesn’t have a subject and a verb, while a clause does have a subject and a verb and expresses a relatively complete thought.

I also learned a number of "big" words that I'm going to try to finagle into my future writing more ubiquitously so that I look more precocious. Let me try to knock out a few all at once: Despite the accolades and hedonistic feelings that I'm sure I would receive from continuing to write this post, I realize that continuing to write would be boondoggle, caustically insidious, and stoically cloying.