Generalizations

"All generalizations are false, including this one."
~Mark Twain

I get in all kinds of trouble for making generalizations.  There have been long-winded, 200+ post conversations on my Facebook page due to my generalized assumptions, comments, and base premises.  It's a wonder Bryan even wants to hang o9ut with me most of the time because he's a much more specific person, and I overgeneralize on a regular. 

When I was doing master's work for teaching, we learned that some folks are individual thinkers, while others are universal thinkers.  Individual thinkers like specific examples, concrete evidence, and can spend a lot of time talking over the details.  Universal thinkers, on the other hand, will have a tendency to think in broad stokes, look at the big picture, and not know exactly how to make things happen.  Individual thinkers will sometimes have a hard time seeing the big picture because they're engrossed in one situation, while universal thinkers tend not to step beyond overarching themes because they don't really need the specifics to know what they know. 

I will most likely always be a universal thinker, but I hope that as I get older, I'll get progressively better at avoiding hasty generalizations while looking at the big picture.  However, I suspect I'll have to keep folks like Bryan close to help balance me out.