Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself!
Repeating everything you say is an essential skill if you want to get anywhere in life. It could save you a lot of trouble. Like say you discovered the cure for cancer, and you only had one friend/acquaintance because everyone else you tried to talk to ran away because you had a giant mole or something, and you told that person and they acted all excited and happy for you so you thought you’d gotten the message across but you never found out that what they really heard was “I want to become a dancer!”. This hypothetical situation would only work if you speak with an American accent (or you pronounce cancer as KAHN-ser), but I’m sure there are millions of other examples out there. Perhaps you found out the meaning of life and you told your person and they thought you said “I’ve been cleaning my knife,” then they’d probably run away from you just like everyone else and you’d be left with no one and you’d die alone, miserable and ugly. And why? Because you didn’t repeat yourself.
The Catcher in the Rye is considered one of the greatest novels out there. It’s narrated by this guy, Holden. He’s very repetitive. All he ever does is repeat himself. The way he talks is supposedly what makes his character believable. I bet if he just said everything once, the novel would be half as thick as it is and a million times less successful. J.D. Salinger must have made a fortune by saying stuff he’d already said over and over again. If I ever write a book, I’ll be sure to have whole chapters repeated. Everyone will love me for it.
I had read this novel a couple of years ago, but we studied it at school this year as well. This meant I had to read it again, but of course that wasn’t a problem. Reading it again refreshed my memory of it and reinforced ideas I’d gotten from the first reading, just like repeating yourself would. This was extremely helpful for writing essays about it. With the wondrous NCEA system, guess what we have to do to get Excellence? We have to keep relating our points to the words of the question. That is, we repeat the words in the question as much as we can so that the marker knows we know what we’re meant to be talking about. So you see, repeating yourself gains you respect from people with really impressive jobs, such as teachers.
Now, consider music. I love music. Everyone loves music. That’s what it’s there for. To love. I take music as a subject, so I’m well aware that a well structured piece has a whole heap of repetition in it. There’s a sign that tells you to repeat things. You ask someone with the most basic musical knowledge what those two lines with the little dots in front of them means and they’ll say “It’s a repeat. That means you play it again.” That’s right. Play it again. Id est, repeat the music you’ve already heard. Why? Because whoever wrote it thinks it would be nice to hear it again. Not only do you use repeat signs to repeat things in music, there is also the concept of a chorus in a song, or just using the same melody or words or rhythm or whatever again when it sounds good. I bet there isn’t a song out there without some form of repetition in it. And, like I said, everyone loves music, so it would pay to learn something from it. Perhaps someomeone would love you too if you had repeats.
I suggest you go back and read what I wrote again, so I don’t have to repeat myself.
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