You can never "perfect" writing...

Us grownups had to think deeply and come up with honest answers to stuff we dont often think about. Like this one: what hobby do you wish you'd take up? 

It's easy to come up with ones you're already trying to perfect. For me, that would be writing, photography, growing flowers, getting more fluent in French.

Even if they tried, the greats would understand this an impossible task.  It is, however, possible to correct writing, if those learning are willing to take honest correction without their egos being hurt.  This writer was a professor of mine, whose first language as a child in post-war Poland, was not English. I remember when she and I first began blogging -- not together -- and I read and wrote to her of a minor English fallacy she was making (a homophonic word, used in the wrong context, iirc).*

Here, it's simple to read -- and here -- the error.  "Us adults" should be "we adults".  (Drop the "extra" words and strip a sentence bare to appreciate the simplicity in fuction).  You'd never say "us had to think deeply...", for example.

Clearly the proper pronoun is "we".  = "We had to think..."

It's a common error in English, but it hurts the ears and makes one appear ignorant of the proper way of speaking, and writing.  I reached out to explain, thinking of one of my teachers (who once was a nun who left her religious order to teach at a public junior high in a working-class town) taught us the beauty of sentence diagramming.

Like with those renovating old homes, strip your sentences down to the basics and build up:  add on, but makes sure the words and parts of speech support the others.  If you do it write, you can indeed perfect a hobby, maybe turn it into a career (it has nothing to do with "connections";  who married who; whose child is in the market for a job or "career" and can benefit from the connections, or injustices, at work their parent faced back in the day...).

What hurts my heart is that people some people cannot take correction from "lessers."  They honestly believe that their position insulates them from criticism.  "I am the Boss Guy (or gal) thus MyWayGoes. Even if it's structually incorrect, and will lead to errors, or confusion or accepatance of "imperfection" because it soothes a hardened ego that thinks life must be all taking of lumps, and giving them back as good as you got it...

Might Doesn't Make Right though, not in wars and not in learned professions.  We adults need to acknowledge that, put in places of leadership and responsibility those who love their craft inside and out, and are willing to sacrifice to make it beautiful but most importantly, structurally sound.

Journalism today has had practitions compromising the craft, too.  Ezra Klein formed a (self titled) cabal, once upon a time, wherein he collected a lot of WhiteMen, most young and a few gals included here and there (one became his wife, iirc).  That effort at collaboration at the Dawn of the Digital Age of newspapering has clearly led to the "advocacy writing" (there really isn't much independent "reporting" going on in many "newsrooms" today) we see in so many publications.

It's hard to tell the truth, when you're pulling for this side or that. (mostly, "elect Joe Biden again!" we see in so many domestic political pieces today.  Men like Frank Bruni (now at j-school professor at Duke, who also used his congeniality and connections to rise from a food writer to an opiner at the NYT when out gay writers were scarce) might know more about marinading and masticating than politics, but he knew who he needed to know to make a writing career from his bloated prose, and ever lesser political knowledge.

Men like Jamelle Bouie have to invest in educating themselves about history and politics to present as credible writers:  their work stands or falls on its own, because they are not WhiteMen who can get away with presenting ill-thought out opinions as nationally worthy reads. (It's the old saw about how everybody has an asshole, like they have a quick-take political opinion to share...)

Until we in America strip our professional class back to the basics -- in education, journalism, medicine, science and the arts -- we are going to continue building a class of ill-trained warriors not pursing excellence in all their works (and falling short, as we MereMortalMen are wont to do in our efforts).

This I know.

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* I recall this, because on the first instance she was kind and accepting, but when I noticed she missed other references of the same word and pointed out the line and sentence and told her to go back and fix those as well, she asked me how my studying for an upcoming test was coming.  She pulled rank!

It hurt, because I meant well and thought I was helping, honestly.  Some people don't like to be ... "topped from the bottom" I have sorely learned in life.  Doesn't stop from being me, and knowing what I know, but oh, how the egos are hurt when an alleged "lesser" demonstrates mere competency, or calls others out, not understanding how those with superior statuses rely heavily on their place in the pecking order...

The best teachers indeed learn from their students, or listen to those who simply know more about a subject and are willing to share. Never ever look down on somebody you think is inferior, but who can teach you a better way, whether it be a mechanic or a poor wordsmith... #Life advice 101.