Against Advice

Callard starts with Margaret Atwood's thin answer to a request for writing tips and admits she gives equally empty advice to her own students. She separates instructions, which serve goals people already hold, from coaching, which changes what they value through personal contact over time. Advice, she argues, tries to deliver transformation impersonally and so fails, though reading an author's work can still shape a young person deeply.

• Successful people asked for advice tend to offer generic suggestions that carry little real information.
• Instructions help people reach goals they already have, without any personal relationship being needed.
• Coaching changes what someone values and depends on a shared history of contact over time.
• Advice fails because it tries to give personal, transformative help in an impersonal, universal form.
• People most often asked for advice usually became who they are without following anyone else's path.
• Real help with becoming someone requires contact, though reading an author's work can be one-sided contact.

Callard writes as a philosopher speaking to general readers: she defines terms carefully, uses a concrete example to drive the argument, and adds wry personal asides. Retyping her teaches clear distinctions, measured long sentences, and a conversational first-person voice.

These excerpts are short quotations for practice and commentary. All rights stay with the author; read the whole essay at the original source.