Well no one has posted yet so I’ll start the ball rolling.
First, hello to everyone on the list, it’s a shame the newsgroup didn’t get
created, but I think mailing lists are always a little more personal anyway.
Second, I thought I may as well start a discussion. I help to run a club here at
the university, and there are always loads of people who want to learn how to
ride unicycles. The problem I find is that all I can say to them is ‘practise!’
so they go off and practise. But then nine times out of ten they seem to lose
interest and give up.
So what I’m asking is, does anyone have any hints for teaching newcomers and
keeping them interested.
Regards, Ed USBASES (University of Surrey Buskers and Street
Entertainers Society)
Julian Edwards, alias Ed.| ee89jje@ee.surrey.ac.uk or ee89jje@surrey.ac.uk Dept.
of Elec. Eng. | University Of Surrey | OS/2 on a PS/2 - half an operating system
Guildford. ENGLAND. | for half a machine
I am afraid that I am not going to be very helpful here but I will include my
thoughts anyway.
Unfortunately there is a significant difference between those who would like to
be able to ride a unicycle and those who would like to learn to ride a unicycle.
And most people can’t tell the difference until they have a go and find out it
isn’t quite as easy as they first hoped. So don’t worry that so many people
appear to give up.
I had a flying instructor who got the best out of me by being encouraging to the
point of outright flattery. The effect was that I seemed to live up to his
praises. I think that lots of encouragement is very important. I believe often
people are afraid that they are having more difficulty than others and that
there is therefore something wrong with them. This makes them depressed and give
up. This is what you have to avoid. Make much of learners’ successes and
belittle their failures.
I don’t know if that will help, as I started out - some people aren’t prepared
to put in the effort. But I do think that you need more home-brew psychology
than anything specific in the form of training your new recruits. I gave up
twice before learning to ride, I didn’t realise how well I was doing because I
didn’t think that I was making any progress at all.
So what I’m asking is, does anyone have any hints for teaching newcomers and
keeping them interested.
My experience is that you need a partner to compete with. My first-semester
roommates and I all went to the MIT club meetings together at first, and all
three of us learned to ride at least a bit. But without somebody flogging you,
it’s very easy to get discouraged and give up.
The best mechanical aid to learning was to have a long railing of suitable
height to practice alongside. The Harvard Bridge (crossing the Charles from MIT
in Cambridge over to Boston) was excellent because there’s about a quarter mile
of interrupted railing and also because the pavement is marked with the distance
every ten Smoots.
If this is the first ever post stored on the forum, then the forum is incomplete. The first post ever on the mailing list is here and predates the one you brought up.
Only 2% of us can follow thru and learn on our own. The rest need constant motivation.
I am launching a training school in a few months because I know if I am their to motivate these people when they are practicing they will succeed. I charge hourly and allow the use of my uni’s and gear.
If you can’t charge for your time then you must offer it as a donation. Its the only way the majority will learn.
Once they learn then they will progress on their own.
Someone like munifreak searches around and finds the really old post, then hits reply and adds the comment “first ever post is now the most recent.”, then clicks “Submit Reply”.
i just purchased a new Pashley unicycle, thats right Pashey has started production of unicycle… there is a new trend called “MUni” not sure what that means yet but my new pashley unicycle hasnt broke yet and i just rode off a CURB!!!
I’m shopping for a unicycle too! There’s this guy Jaggerr that I met online. He says he has an almost new Troxel unicycle he wants to sell me. He just bought it new and it’s in grate shape, but he wants to sell it so he can have a Schwinn unicyle to match is Schwinn Varsity 10-speeder.
Ah, the memories… mine was canary yellow and about 40 pounds… I paid for it with the paper route and continued to deliver papers with it. I eventually put bar end shifters on it. When I was 17, Dad and I did a 640 mile tour up through New England into Canada, including the White Mountains. We made our own panniers from army surplus backpacks. We slept in a tent in people’s backyards, including one night of icy rain which puddled under the tent. Crazy!
