My takeaway from this, and it might be wrong, was that one thing education does is help people put t

My takeaway from this, and it might be wrong, was that one thing education does is help people put their thoughts in order when they need to do it. For those of us who learned to do that pretty early, it can be hard to appreciate how hard it is for other folks. Especially if our life is such that we don’t interact with people with very little education very often, and in very little depth.

That experience did make me conclude that linguistic thinking is in fact really important in this modern world, and that it’s a shame if people don’t appreciate that.

• Because sometimes you’re in the middle of a bad story, and, to get out of it, you need to be able to tell that story in a way that makes a convincing case that it’s bad and you’re being treated unfairly.
  
• Or sometimes the story you need to be able to tell is why you deserve an opportunity to pivot into a new story. 
  

I can’t help but think that writing is unusually good preparation for those sorts of moments.