What To Study?

I frequently ask prospective students on tours what they want to study. Often, I get blank looks and long pauses and finally, “I don’t know.” Unfortunately, it seems to be stressful for the whole family, not just the student. At Hampshire it’s OK to relax a little more when someone asks you that question. I certainly don’t expect the response to be a singular answer. Oddly, what you answer back isn’t even important, it’s just a conversation starter – an interaction.

A response to an asked question is really the gateway to leaning; it’s that technique of a back and forth question-and-answer interaction that hopefully turns into a useful conversation of discovery for both people. It’s not that either one of us knows the correct answer(s) – frequently we don’t. Instead we use conversation as a method of discovering our interests and possible actions based on those interests through suggestions of books to read, good classes to take and appropriate people to talk with.

Certainly it’s not that anyone expects you to know what job you will want for the rest of your life right now. You’ll most likely be wrong no matter what your answer or how much you believe it to be true. It is, however, a question of what you actually want to do all day. What do you like to do? What are you willing to invest a lot of effort in? What, at the end of day has made you happy?

Our style is to find promising situations and jump into them and then later assess the outcome. A Hampshire grad once said, “ Life is full of once in a lifetime opportunities.” Some he took, others he let pass by and later he found more. It’s about thoughtful interactions and timely participation judiciously chosen.

Work on things you find interesting and that will offer you still yet more options later (both short term and long term). You need both sides – fun now and possibilities later. Work on projects that are hard, but doable. It’s just like working out. You need to stretch a little, work up a sweat, build up stamina and get stronger by doing so – over time.

An important criterion for judging the worth of what you’re working on is suspense. Yep, just like in the movies. If you aren’t worried about how your work is going to come out, if there isn’t uncertainty, what you’re working on isn’t very important or hard enough. Some things are way too easy to do to really benefit you. Remember, you’re trying to learn and grow, not just turn in homework. If you just want to turn in homework you should go somewhere else.

Find questions that make the world interesting to you by learning enough to notice what those questions should be. With deep insights and strong questions the answers take care of themselves.

gunther

Back to the Beginning, Again

One of the things that strikes me again and again as I see tour groups come through the film building is the difficulty that people have in asking meaningful questions, even when it’s really important that they do so. It’s hard for people to put up their hand and ask a question that would give them sufficient information to make a decision. Most of them just stand there and look around as if seeing a hallway will provide enough information from which to select a future college for their student.

But with a little banter back and forth, a few pointed questions at them, a slow painful response, you can build up a back-and-forth exchange that will finally allow them to express their concerns and address their uncertainties. It takes time to build that interaction and time for it to unfold. Usually that time is lacking.

I see this also with first year students in class. Everyone sits there uncertain what a reasonable question would be. What, they think, do I even know enough of, to be confused about. They’re baffled by the whole thing and sit there in a puddle of inertia waiting for clarity to simply strike them.

How do you break people out of that and get them going?

The real goal is to get them finally to a level where new questions can be self-answered or they have sufficient skills to discover the answer.  But, fundamentally, you need to learn how to discover what is the question that should be asked right now?

So I see all of this as much the same problem, the problem of being a beginner. At the earliest stages of learning anything you have no vocabulary, no methods, no history, no resources, and often no hope. It’s depressing.

It is problematic, but if you make your way past this initial stage with even some modest amount of understand under your belt you might find yourself, through positive actions, miraculously able to do things , which then allows you to feel better about what you’re doing, maybe even good, which then makes it easier to learn the rest of it all. A rolling stone gathers good will and then goes faster, sometimes even in the right direction.

If you miss that turn in the road of simply being able to do things, you will, mostly likely, never succeed. Energy sapped, you’ll give up and walk away disappointed and disgruntled thinking you failed. Mostly, you never had a chance. The deck was stacked against you and you didn’t even know that.

So what’s it take to show up at the right place with just enough skills to do something that makes you feel good enough to keep going and eventually get much better?

Part of it is understanding that there is an emotional landscape that we’re walking across with dips and hills, elegant vistas and murky views, quiet times and hectic days. We’ll experience a range of emotions and feelings that we need at times to embrace or ignore, but always realize that it’s a flow that’s as natural as the passing of the day. Some days it rains, some days the sun shines brightly, but it will always change and then change again.

We also need to feel that there’s actually a path we can follow. Even more useful, that there could be a map to show us where we are, where we’ve been and what the options are for future exploration. With out a map to discover the terrain we’re not just lost, but lost with no insights about where we even want to be. Maybe we’re actually right where we want to be, but we just don’t know that.

Questions are like surveyors sent out ahead to draw the landscape, plot the pathways, find the way and then report back information that we can use to make better informed decisions. Without strong questions we’re just wandering in the wilderness, just short of being  totally lost.

The Hampshire way is to ask, ask again, and ask someone else. None of the answers are necessarily true. So not only do you need good questions, but you also need to question the answers. It’s up to you, with strong questions and valid answers, to build the map to find out both where you are and where your really want to go.

gunther

Close to the End and A New Beginning

We're almost at the end of another fast year. The pace has picked up dramatically this week since all the final assignments are due on Friday. At this time of year I often get a student or two that finally realize they might actually need to know how to edit in Final Cut, but not this year. Everyone seems to be already working under their own power and while maybe a little anxious, are chugging along on their own steam.

So it's slightly odd that at this time of the year I'm looking for an overriding approach to what we do, and will do again, in the fall semester. Happily I think I've actually found it. There is a link off of http://99percent.com web site about a Kevin Kelly post discussing the necessity of remaining a newbie about learning software – for the rest of your life.

Wow, that's just our philosophy. We're always learning new applications, new methods, new approaches both for good reasons of progress and for bad reasons of fashion or following the hot new thing.

Kelly's quote is really "You will be a newbie forever." I changed that slightly to: You will be a student forever, which directs it, I hope, away from only a techie mindset and reminds us that we're always going to be learning something through out life. If we're only in college for four years there's more time out of it learning that spent in it learning.

What we ought to get out of college is to be really skillful at learning all of the other things we'll need to know later and to be able to learn it more easily than when we started college and maybe more importantly learn all of this while you're still in college and could really use it. Right.

The other part is the asking, making, and sharing knowledge with others, all linked parts of learning and living in the world.

Making, we know, is one of the best ways to finally understand how those theoretical concepts play out in the world. Without theory we have to try things out every time to discover what the outcome might be. With theory we can project ahead what an outcome could be, try it out to prove the theory's validity, then build on that. The more correct our prediction the greater the reach we have in thinking things through. It's using that leverage, validated by direct experimentation, that gives us power.

The other part is asking questions of each other, the world itself, and oh yes, ourselves that keeps the dialog of learning going. The process of the dialog helps refine our thinking, our rhetoric, our plans and it can also show us when we're way off base, or our thinking is just fuzzy.

Sharing our knowledge with others is a terrific way to realize what we don't really understand after all and to also realize, proudly, what we do grasp and own as our personal area of expertise. Too often we gloss over what we think we understand until, whoops, we're called up short by having to clearly explain it to someone else. Working an idea through in order to be able to explain it is the best way to really understand it.

My work target now will be to develop ways to build a program to develop the skills necessary to give us the best beginner mode possible. This isn't just a button you can push to run the "easy scenario" of life, but a mindset that gives you an edge in learning the next anything. With beginner mode skills (BMS) you can shorten the cycle of learning and deepen your insights and the final outcome. CEB: Certified Expert Beginner. Cool.

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