The thirst of many honesties (hah, so punny, get it?)
December 6, 2008
Dear blog, I made a fool of myself in class. True, this is a common occurrence, but I am hardly bothered by it.
I pretended to be some sleazy salesgirl (although not as bad as those Cricket Baby girls) trying to sell rubber tubing to companies other than medical/industrial ones.
So our professor said to take risks. To be honest, she’s right. To be honest, the other students, the ones who want to play it safe, who posted replies in their blogs that when they do something not by-the-book they get scolded, and so they rather not take such a risk…are not wrong either. The problem, is that they’re not doing something different. They’re just taking the prescription wrong.
But enough of us will have bosses who make ridiculous demands of us. Yes, make an awesome PowerPoint in 5 minutes. Impossible task that will likely result in failure. I treat this as prep. Hell, I did have a supervisor that made crazy demands of me this past summer. But I knew I wouldn’t get fired, because even if I couldn’t read her mind, I was one of the best, if not the best graphic designer intern they’ve had thus far. I know that my grade does not depend on the amount of scolding. So in way, I’m not worried about it. I calculate my risks. But I still take them.
I’d rather beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.
A personal motto, I suppose.
Thing is, I figured that for this class, unlike any other class, risks, no matter how foolish, would be rewarded in some fashion or another. I mean, for this class, we were totally encouraged to take risks. Make the environment our own. There’s playing it safe, and there’s playing it scared. Again, what’s the worse that can happen? Some scolding? Pft. Whatever. No one can scold you better than your own family. So really, no one scares me in that respect. Sure, I don’t bite the hand that feeds me, gives me my grade, and gives me a paycheck. That doesn’t mean I sit in wait for the next command.
Dear blog, what makes a better blog? The blog on politics and culture, or the one…that..tells my story?
Filed in Class, dear, me
Tags: Add new tag, authority, Class, groupwork, power, risk
December 7, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Could it not be argued then because you have prior experience to this spontaneity and this may be many of our firsts that that is why we were less risky?
Or it could be be a confidence thing. Does most of this class have less confidence when compared to you on risks?
December 9, 2008 at 9:21 pm
You speak of taking risks and not worrying about anyone’s opinion either good or bad, but doesn’t the simple fact that you strove to be unique while everyone else was “playing it safe” imply that you did ultimately care what she thought?
I personally don’t believe that others are afraid to take risks for the fear of being scolded. The anger arises when we are scolded for not doing something that we *technically* weren’t told to do. Now I know that the next retort will be, “does everything we do really need to be laid out in black and white? can we never do something without being told?”. My response to those questions is that, yes we can act on our own, for ourselves (and this class has helped to increase that) but when told to “review the chapter and find the key points” the overwhelming majority do not jump to alternative methods of presentation simply because we are so used to the process of read, condense and repeat. While this method may seem archaic, it is what we have trained our entire educational to do. In kindergarten, you heard a story then you drew a picture to re-tell the story. You weren’t asked to do an interpretive dance. (While that may not be the greatest analogy, you get my point.)
Therefore, while you may have the predisposition to jump right in and start swimming, many of us are still getting our feet wet.
December 15, 2008 at 7:52 pm
C.–the instruction was not ‘review the chapter.’ It was discuss the reading; consider the questions in the post on locationf8 as possible jump off points or ideas for organizing your comments. That’s where the whole ‘rubber tubing’ thing came from.