Jenny Turpish Slapped Me

I found this quiz while i was googling something completely else. And I took it because, well, why not eh? And I was amused by the result, so here it is:

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Wackiness: 46/100
Rationality: 56/100
Constructiveness: 72/100
Leadership: 38/100

You are a SRCF--Sober Rational Constructive Follower. This makes you a White House staffer. [ha ha ha]

You are a tremendous asset to any employer, cool under pressure, productive, and a great communicator. You feel the need to right wrongs, take up slack, mediate disputes and keep the peace. This comes from a secret fear that business can't go on without you--or worse, that it can.

If you have a weakness, it is your inability to say "no." While your peers respect you, they find it difficult to resist taking advantage of your positive attitude and eagerness to take on work. You depend on a good manager to keep you from sinking under the weight and burning out.

Of the 129978 people who have taken this quiz since tracking began (8/17/2004), 7.5 % are this type.

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I think this is a cool analysis and is actually quite true, especially the "fear that business can't go on without me, or worse, that it can" part. Boy oh boy, never really thought about it but yep, that pretty much fits me like a glove and is the source of most of my work-related anxiety :P

Actually I was so amused by it that I forgot what I was originally looking for. Oh well, it's almost time to go home anyway.

You can take it too!

Health day in Canada

I am going to the doctor this afternoon, and of course, the main affliction that has been plaguing me is not so pronounced today. I hope I will be able to articulate what has been bothering me, because it's not something that seems to lend itself to concrete diagnosis or definition. It's kind of vague and probably the doctor will tell me it's stress-related. The classic medical dodge. However, this is just my completely uneducated opinion.

I also have a pain in whatever it is -- muscle? tendon? ligament? can you tell that I am an anatomy-tard? -- that runs down the back of my foot. Not the Achilles tendon, but kind of next to it. Every once in a while I stretch my leg out too much, usually while bending, and I get this hot ripping pain down the back of my heel. I'm hoping the Doc can help me out with that one too.

Wish me luck!

it's one of those in-between days

where it's kinda sunny but supposed to rain later, the temp not quite hitting 20 degrees. So I wore cords and running shoes and dammit I'm overdressed for this stuffy library place where I spend most of my day. Now I'm sweating and grossing myself out. Ugh.

Blink and my life

Okay so last time I posted I mentioned that I'm reading the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Well, it is a remarkably interesting book and I have found several things that resonate with my life incredibly, and I am only halfway through it so I'm sure there will be more before the end, but this one was so timely that I had to write a little something about it. The section in question is called The Perils of Introspection, and it is about many things, but mainly it is about shallow thought vs deep thought (my words), and how sometimes a quick, or unconscious act or decision, can produce less accurate results than a more detailed examination.

He gives the example of an insight puzzle: A giant inverted pyramid is perfectly balanced on its point. Any movement of the pyramid will cause it to topple over. Underneath the pyramid is a $100 bill. How do you remove the bill without disturbing the pyramid? Now, I came up with the solution almost immediately (which he confirms about a paragraph later to be the correct one), but his point is that in a scientific experiment, people's chances of getting it right were greatly reduced as soon as they started trying to explain why or how they arrived at the answer. He uses logic problems and sports analogies to illustrate this point, but I find the philosophy can also be applied to writing and the creative process.

In my meeting with J's school principal the other day, my stepdad and I used, as an example of why this classroom has been bad for her, her joy and talent in writing. It was so free-flowing and exuberant in October, and it has slowly been squeezed out of her over the past 8 months because of the heavy load of corrections that are assessed and assigned after each writing assignment. My stepdad (a writer, publisher and teacher) and I recognized almost simultaneously that this syndrome is J being hung up on the mechanics of writing, which distracts from the creative process, and turns her joy into dread. Malcolm Gladwell, quoting psychologist Jonathan W. Schooler, describes it like this:

With a logic problem, asking people to explain themselves doesn't impair their ability to come up with the answers. In some cases, in fact, it may help. But problems that require a flash of insight operate by different rules. ... "When you start becoming reflective about the process, it undermines your ability. You lose the flow. There are certain kinds of fluid, intuitive, nonverbal kinds of experience that are vulnerable to this process." As human beings, we are capable of extraordinary leaps of insight and instinct. ... [W]hat Schooler is saying is that ... these abilities are incredibly fragile. Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.

I believe that writing falls into this category of "fluid, intuitive, nonverbal kinds of experience," and that picking it apart by correcting spelling or figuring out what kind of rhetorical argument is represented in the text, only serves to kill the fun part of writing, making J and me both feel like it's not worth it any more. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm the first person to stand up and say grammar and spelling are vital parts of writing, and analysis of form, style and substance can greatly enrich the reading experience also. But after reading this section in Gladwell's fascinating book, I feel like I'm a little bit justified in my understanding of the phenomenon at work in both J's and my experience of our writing classes this year.

She is being made to pick apart her writing mechanically: spelling, punctuation, capitalization, word choices. I am "learning" how to analyze my own writing in terms of rhetorical content and style. This latter part has been extremely difficult for me, inspiring an unprecedented level of paralysis that I am forcing back bit by bit, in my desire to finish this course off and not look back. I've definitely learned something about myself, in taking this course and in reading this book, and I believe that is what the process is all about.

apparently I've been handed something or other...bookish he calls me!

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?

Okay I confess I've never read Fahrenheit 451 (nor seen Fahrenheit 9/11) but I can tell you which book I'd like to be: my all-time favourite book, The Mists of Avalon. Why? Because it's a wonderful story about women in a time that wasn't about women, but was all about magic, and the transition from paganism to organized religion in Britain. Lovely and fascinating.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Yes.

The last book you finished is?

Good Faith by Jane Smiley, my new favourite author. I'm fascinated by writers who can write so well and say so little.

What are you currently reading?

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. Utterly fascinating!!!! One of those ones where I'm torn between sucking it back like a shot of tequila and sipping it slowly like cognac.

Five books you would take to a deserted island?

Oh shit. I hate these questions.

1. Mists. See above.
2. Probably A Thousand Acres since I saw the movie and never read the book and now I love Jane Smiley.
3. Three Plums in One because Evanovich is perfect for reading on the beach and I don't know if I could settle on one.
4. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. I'm sure I could read it at least twice more without getting bored.
5. A book of crossword puzzles because I always get restless after hours and hours of reading.

Who are you going to pass this book to?

is this a trick question? I guess I could pass it to Bella, my stepdad (even though he'd probably scorn it), and my mom...do you have to have a blog to qualify for this game?