Laughter – The End of the Story

This post is actually a follow-up to my Effective Family Communication newsletter that will be published tomorrow (confusing, I know, but such is the world of automated e-mail).  [Sign up for my monthly newsletters by clicking on this link.]

Death by laughter is the subject of much debate (perhaps not in your circles, but on the Internet virtually any topic is the subject of much debate).  Snopes, the website dedicated to determining whether commonly reported stories are true, has a page entitled “The Last Laugh’s on Him.”  It corroborates the story about English bricklayer, Alex Mitchell, who died while laughing at the TV show The Goodies.

Wikipedia, on its page entitled “Death from Laughter,” notes that Mitchell’s widow sent a letter to The Goodies thanking those involved for making her husband’s final moments happy ones.  I’m all for feedback, but really?

Anyway, as I say in my newsletter, my view of the subject can be summarized as: “Laughter, It’s Worth the Risk.”

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Strategic Engagement – Learning to Read and Handle Your Teachers

It’s that time of year when students have begun figuring out their teachers (or professors) and are making decisions about how to handle assignments.  What happens when your worldview diverges significantly from that of your teacher?  Here are three strategies:

1. Give the teacher what she wants.
2. Stick to your guns and come out blazing.
3. Disguise your beliefs with a neutral tone (NOTE: Some courses require a neutral tone as part of communicating within that area of study).

What my experience (23+ years as a full-time student and 15+ as a college professor) has taught me – you must determine the appropriate strategy in each instance.  There isn’t one strategy that is inherently most effective.

You must keep in mind the following factors:

1. The primary objective is learning.
2. A secondary objective is earning a grade, maintaining or strengthening your GPA.
3. It is highly unlikely that you are going to persuade the professor to change his mind in any significant way.

So you need to identify and understand your professor.  There are those who are:

1. Challenging but fair – They will grade your work based upon its response to the criteria for the assignment rather than on whether you agree with them.
2. Neutral – You can’t figure them out, so taking a stand for the purpose of agreeing or provoking is a shot in the dark.
3. Indoctrinators – You must express agreement with their positions and meet the criteria for the assignments in order to do well in their courses.  (Of course, my perspective is that agreement with the professor should not be one of the criteria for success in a course.)

My advice: Don’t lose sight of your objectives.  Don’t be overconfident in your persuasive skills.  Don’t miss opportunities to learn through disagreement.  Don’t waste your energy – it is still unwise to throw your pearls to the pigs (to paraphrase Jesus).  Never let a teacher or professor be your impediment to learning.  Or, less idealistically, there are some courses you just need to complete on the journey to your degree – don’t let them be a bigger issue than necessary.

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9/11 – Don’t expect others to remember what they do not remember

Ten years ago, Judy and I had just moved to Ohio, and I was attending a conference in Florida on Sep 11th.  I remember going back to my hotel room and watching as the World Trade Center towers were brought to the ground.  It seemed surreal, as though it were a scene from a 1970s disaster movie.  Afterwards, since there were no flights, I ended up catching a ride with people headed back to NY – they went quite a few miles out of their way to bring me home.

Recently we were talking about 9/11 with our children.  At the time they were 5, 4, and 2.  They have no direct memories of the events of that day, although they have studied them in school.

I was 1½ when President Kennedy was assassinated, so I have no recollection of where I was that day.  I’ve heard people talk passionately about their experiences in WWII, the Great Depression, and Vietnam – I do remember Vietnam from the nightly news.

While others have written eloquently about the lessons and insights gained from 9/11, I want to make a much simpler point.  Don’t expect people to remember what they don’t remember.  We need to be careful that we don’t expect our children (certainly children the age of mine and younger) to have deep emotional connections to 9/11.  And asking them to watch documentaries and interviews for the purpose of evoking a strong response is unrealistic.  When people tell me I need to watch a WWII movie, I may learn something about our shared history and the bravery of those who have given their lives for our freedom, but I’m never going to connect to those events in any way comparable to those who lived through them.

So, let’s give the kids a break – they can’t remember what they don’t remember, and what they don’t remember will not have the same emotional impact that it does for those of us who will never forget where we were on that day.

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Parenting to Personality Type – I keep learning

I use Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as a tool in my work and make every effort to apply the insights to my parenting and marriage.  Every once in a while I recognize something that suddenly makes sense of a situation – giving me a fuller perspective.  Here’s a recent example.

I played a new card game with our two sons (Camelot Legends).  It was a game where each card has a great deal of detail that influences how and when it is played.  Since we were learning the game I was intent on getting through the first session – picking up the major points and understanding the rules before we focused on all of the details.  Besides which it was getting late and so we didn’t have a lot of time to play.

One son, like me, has an intuiting preference– big picture, global thinker, creative, future oriented.  The other son has a sensing preference – he is drawn to the details, getting things right, accuracy, learning new things through connections to his past.

As I was trying to push the game along – “Let’s just get the big picture, understand the basic rules, and have the experience before we play it again and focus on all of the details” – my sensing son wanted to quit.

Later, it dawned on me that I was creating a situation that supported my intuiting preferences, an approach that was not supportive of my son’s sensing preferences.  One of my principles is: “We make virtues of our preferences.”  I was learning the game the way that was most comfortable to me and was frustrated with my son’s resistance.

I asked my son if in the future it would be a better experience if he could spend time beforehand reading each card, familiarizing himself with the details, and he said it would be.

So it is easy for me to criticize his desire to quit without realizing that, for him, I created an environment in which quitting is preferable to having an experience that runs so counter to his preferences.

As we mature we learn to endure unpleasant situations, but with our children we must be careful not to expect maturity where it is still evolving.

I’m still learning.  For me, at least, understanding is easier than consistent application.

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