Well, at least I hope it is coming. It has been a cold, cloudy, wet summer here in Zurich, and this coming week is supposed to finally be getting above 70 F. And after all that low-sugar drama last week (which I am still trying to keep up a bit, while M joins in for his own reasons), I realized last night while I was doing dishes that...I was doing dishes. While M gave A her bath. I wasn't on the bed, just trying to recover for 10 minutes enough energy to put her to bed without all my body screaming to go to sleep. That I had enough energy and was just feeling, well, normal.
And again today. I'm not exhausted by the time we try to put her down for a nap, and although I do sleep for an hour, I haven't been feeling like it is all I can do to make it through the day. How long has it been since I've felt this way? Not even noticing the doing of a load of laundry because my back feels ok and I'm not so tired. Or that I decide to get some dishes done because there is some energy left just after I've had A for a while.
It feels good to feel this normal. Life has not been this normal for a while. My body definitely hasn't. And I haven't given myself a break for that. Until now, when I've realized that I just wasn't up to many daily tasks and I was doing my best to do what I could. I don't know if it somewhat due to the sugar I've stopped eating so much of, but it is also because my back is doing better. I'm still trying to not look at my iPhone constantly when I'm on a bus or tram, and to move around more. And my reproductive system seems to finally be calming down a bit from the miscarriage. I didn't realize how long that could take, either.
I'm the last one up tonight, as the only member of the family to have had a nap (well, ok, the dog always takes the nap and the early bedtime), and I feel awake. I've started a new book (The Foremost Good Fortune) about a woman who moves with her husband and two small kids to China for a year. And has great doubts about it all, and talks very early on in the book about how she has a place she goes to in her head when she gets overwhelmed by her extremely active 4 and 6 year old boys. So she doesn't yell as much. And the world feels like a smaller place to me again as I hear from someone else telling me her struggles with motherhood.
A is continuing to talk more and more, and as she is really getting good at this potty training thing, she has decided to name her poops according to size. There was a Mama, Papa, Baby and puppy poop tonight. And then after dinner she decided we should all go into the living room and dance to the NPR music broadcast by wiggling, spinning, and shaking our heads yelling "No!" as loud as possible.
It is enchanting to see her own ideas and personality coming out. Her imagination, if you let her have it and just go along with it, and her ideas. A few weeks ago, during some meal, I told her to close her eyes to really taste something we were eating. Probably after a trip to a farmer's market, or in Amsterdam. And she took to it. And completely got on board with the idea. She tell us now sometimes to close our eyes. We all sit there, actually tasting cherry tomatoes as sweet as cherries, or a great cucumber or plum.
Oh! Plum season is back and once again I am in love. I've never liked the plums we got in the US. The purple, sour ones. But here, they are magnificent, and the purple ones are only one of 10 varieties you see for a few months each summer.
It is getting cold on the balcony, and dark. Time to think about going to bed. After all, the old lady who seems to be accompanying her cats (or someone else's cats) on a walk down the street is headed to the little plot of grass at the end of the block where the old man who used to let his dog poop on the sidewalk will be waiting for their evening canoodle (as M puts it), is on her way to the rendesvous. Closing time.
Showing posts with label speaking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label speaking. Show all posts
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Monday, June 27, 2011
Entitled to understand
Ok, today this is officially a space for me to think through this workshop. I need some questions to ask my audience, to get us all thinking about these topics.
In interview data gathering, it is always a better idea to ask open-ended, or at least not Yes/No questions. I'm guessing the same applies for a good question to ask a group that you want to get talking. And let's try them out on whoever is reading this right now and can leave a comment:
(1) Name an event or setting in your field where you rarely or never talk/ask questions.
(2) Name an event or setting in which you do ask questions or talk.
Hmm. I've already re-structured both of those questions a few times. This is good practice to figure out exactly what my point is.
(3) Name an event or setting outside of work/school where you are very comfortable talking or asking questions.
So what is my point with these questions? First go leave a comment with your answer for the three, if you please would.
I'm guessing that for the first question, there will be a lot of standard, departmental and conference settings. Which is the problem - there is something in the structure of these events that hinders easy and comfortable participation. This is a good time to add that, in my study, I assume that for the most part, the people attending these events in departments (morning coffees, journal clubs, colloquia) are well meaning. The faculty (at least in my interviews) say they want students to speak up more, and the students say they want to speak up more. And personally, in counselling, I've found this assumption to get me a lot further towards being happy and having healthier relationships, than assuming that someone is evil or trying to make my life hell on purpose. People have their own shit and that shit sometimes hits us in the face on accident, as they are spinning wildly, dealing with their own issues. Like that secretary I probably freaked out a few posts ago. Assuming she was scared instead of evil means I get to drop the issue and stop dwelling on her dark mark on this Earth.
Anyway, I assume everyone is well-intentioned, and that they all do want students to speak up more. Then I'm free to see what is standing in the way. Because there are other events, maybe a great mentor's office hours, or with friends in a study group, where students are speaking about science. And in the absence of even these few patches of hope (for me, there was a GR professor's office hours and studying with my friend A), there is hopefully at least one place in life where each person feels comfortable speaking. With a best friend or spouse, a parent, a stranger on a flight, a child.
I wonder if I should ask for them to list many events where they are uncomfortable speaking, and comfortable speaking? To make discussion more lively? Ooh, I know. Let's start really fun - tell me about the worst event you've ever seen/attended for speaking up.
These are the kinds of stories, part gossip and horror, that can help highlight the extreme version of unhelpful structures. Like the secret journal club, held without a group leader's knowledge, because the official event was so horribly demeaning.
Not only is gossip good to get the discussion flowing, turns out gossip and ridicule are key cultural norm delineators and enforces. What someone makes fun of about another person's behavior (if it is a joke that the group approves of, laughs at) communicates what that group holds to be a breach of proper conduct.
So, I'll start with some version of these 3 questions, have people write them down, we'll list them on a board or overhead, and then I'll talk a bit about research on speaking in academic settings, and we'll finish up by looking at the structures of the speaking-friendly events and see if we can't redesign some of the unfriendly events with that info. For instance, saving intellectual face is an important part of academic speaking, so instead of telling students there is no such thing as a stupid question, you might see how much they are worried about this issue by giving out index cards for people to write their questions on anonymously at a colloquium, and then collecting and asking a few of the speaker. Because we have all probably had a question, been worried it was too stupid to ask, and then seen a more senior member of the audience ask it.
Let me give an example of a place I've felt comfortable speaking up - a dance performance troupe practice. A group of us are going up in front of an audience, and we all need to, want to, look good. If you don't ask your questions, you're not going to get things right. There is a product you are aiming to produce and you'd rather be seen as not knowing something in practice than on stage. People feel entitled to understand in that kind of setting.
Entitled to understand. Crazy notion if you apply it to graduate students in a colloquium audience, eh? This is another aspect of a culture, whether it holds the speaker or the listener as responsible for the listener's understanding. A subset of this is in humor - is the joke teller or the joke hearer responsible for "getting" the joke? This will influence how subtle or explicit a joke is in a given culture. So back to the academic setting, a group of people leave the room after a talk, many of them having not understood most of the talk. Whose fault is this? The answer is somewhat determined by the culture's stance - should the speaker have done a better job explaining or should the listeners have tried harder and known more in order to understand better?
In interview data gathering, it is always a better idea to ask open-ended, or at least not Yes/No questions. I'm guessing the same applies for a good question to ask a group that you want to get talking. And let's try them out on whoever is reading this right now and can leave a comment:
(1) Name an event or setting in your field where you rarely or never talk/ask questions.
(2) Name an event or setting in which you do ask questions or talk.
Hmm. I've already re-structured both of those questions a few times. This is good practice to figure out exactly what my point is.
(3) Name an event or setting outside of work/school where you are very comfortable talking or asking questions.
So what is my point with these questions? First go leave a comment with your answer for the three, if you please would.
I'm guessing that for the first question, there will be a lot of standard, departmental and conference settings. Which is the problem - there is something in the structure of these events that hinders easy and comfortable participation. This is a good time to add that, in my study, I assume that for the most part, the people attending these events in departments (morning coffees, journal clubs, colloquia) are well meaning. The faculty (at least in my interviews) say they want students to speak up more, and the students say they want to speak up more. And personally, in counselling, I've found this assumption to get me a lot further towards being happy and having healthier relationships, than assuming that someone is evil or trying to make my life hell on purpose. People have their own shit and that shit sometimes hits us in the face on accident, as they are spinning wildly, dealing with their own issues. Like that secretary I probably freaked out a few posts ago. Assuming she was scared instead of evil means I get to drop the issue and stop dwelling on her dark mark on this Earth.
Anyway, I assume everyone is well-intentioned, and that they all do want students to speak up more. Then I'm free to see what is standing in the way. Because there are other events, maybe a great mentor's office hours, or with friends in a study group, where students are speaking about science. And in the absence of even these few patches of hope (for me, there was a GR professor's office hours and studying with my friend A), there is hopefully at least one place in life where each person feels comfortable speaking. With a best friend or spouse, a parent, a stranger on a flight, a child.
I wonder if I should ask for them to list many events where they are uncomfortable speaking, and comfortable speaking? To make discussion more lively? Ooh, I know. Let's start really fun - tell me about the worst event you've ever seen/attended for speaking up.
These are the kinds of stories, part gossip and horror, that can help highlight the extreme version of unhelpful structures. Like the secret journal club, held without a group leader's knowledge, because the official event was so horribly demeaning.
Not only is gossip good to get the discussion flowing, turns out gossip and ridicule are key cultural norm delineators and enforces. What someone makes fun of about another person's behavior (if it is a joke that the group approves of, laughs at) communicates what that group holds to be a breach of proper conduct.
So, I'll start with some version of these 3 questions, have people write them down, we'll list them on a board or overhead, and then I'll talk a bit about research on speaking in academic settings, and we'll finish up by looking at the structures of the speaking-friendly events and see if we can't redesign some of the unfriendly events with that info. For instance, saving intellectual face is an important part of academic speaking, so instead of telling students there is no such thing as a stupid question, you might see how much they are worried about this issue by giving out index cards for people to write their questions on anonymously at a colloquium, and then collecting and asking a few of the speaker. Because we have all probably had a question, been worried it was too stupid to ask, and then seen a more senior member of the audience ask it.
Let me give an example of a place I've felt comfortable speaking up - a dance performance troupe practice. A group of us are going up in front of an audience, and we all need to, want to, look good. If you don't ask your questions, you're not going to get things right. There is a product you are aiming to produce and you'd rather be seen as not knowing something in practice than on stage. People feel entitled to understand in that kind of setting.
Entitled to understand. Crazy notion if you apply it to graduate students in a colloquium audience, eh? This is another aspect of a culture, whether it holds the speaker or the listener as responsible for the listener's understanding. A subset of this is in humor - is the joke teller or the joke hearer responsible for "getting" the joke? This will influence how subtle or explicit a joke is in a given culture. So back to the academic setting, a group of people leave the room after a talk, many of them having not understood most of the talk. Whose fault is this? The answer is somewhat determined by the culture's stance - should the speaker have done a better job explaining or should the listeners have tried harder and known more in order to understand better?
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