The following is an entry from my CiViL Groups Log on Wednesday, March 10, 2004. All names have been changed to protect privacy.
How Freshmen Think
These freshmen rarely go as deep into their own problems, thoughts, or feelings as the seniors do. Most freshmen are still in concrete operations. They don’t yet have the ability to think below the surface or process abstract ideas well. They do better with images, experiences and stories, rather than ideas and ideals. That makes this group more of a challenge, but I still enjoy them.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Today I asked them about their personal strengths and weaknesses. They had a hard time with both. My question was too abstract, so I had to ask several different ways. I finally asked them to evaluate each other, and that generated some observations about strengths. Interestingly, they didn’t have much to say about each other’s weaknesses. As strengths, they listed
Respect for teachers
Make friends well
Good attitude
Sense of humor
Genuineness
Set an example for younger siblings
Easy to talk to about problems
And the weaknesses they described were
Need to focus better
Need to stop playing around
Need to stay on task
Need to stop doing foolish things in anger
Who Sees What
The interplay here made me think of the division between what I can see about myself, what only others can see about me, and what none of us can see. I drew a diagram of a circle which I divided into thirds and wrote the titles in each section:
To illustrate this, I told them that most communication is non verbal. I pulled my chair up ridiculously close to Marquez while speaking. Then, without explaining, I moved my chair far away from all of them. I sat slouched, and I pulled in and sat very attentively. Then I spoke in different tones of voice. With a very quiet voice I communicated timidity or fear. With a loud voice I displayed anger and bravado. My point was that others can see a lot in our body language and speech that we may not be trying to communicate. Maybe we aren’t even aware of it.
Avoiding Risk
Ideally we want “Stuff I Can See” to be the largest section, but we often don’t want to hear about our own weaknesses. And even if we can see our weaknesses, we try to wall them off from the “Stuff Others Can See.” We do this in two basic ways. We avoid risk, or we over-risk. I described a family scene at my house in which Melony, our daughter and I were dancing, but our son was not dancing because he was afraid we would laugh at him. He didn’t want others to see him as a poor dancer, so he said, “I can’t dance,” and he wouldn’t try. He was avoiding risk.
Over-Risk
The other extreme from risk-avoidance is to over-risk. This can be motivated by a need to prove something. For example, when I was a child, my older brother was very bossy, and it may be that he was trying to compensate for being small. Sometimes over-risk is motivated by an addiction to the adrenaline rush that comes when we place ourselves at risk. I’ve talked to students who enjoy shoplifting, not because they need the items they steal, but because of the thrill they feel when they break the rules and risk getting caught. Of course some people over-risk because they suffer from a combination of poor judgment and a childish desire for fun.
Abdul’s Example
Abdul offered an example from his own life. In yesterday’s basketball game, our team was being beaten badly by a team they had previously defeated. In the last part of the game, he got mad and panicked. He started taking desperate shots, making foolish decisions that cost them the game. After Abdul described that scene I asked if he could think of any other situations in which he has panicked and taken foolish risks in an effort to gain control of the situation. The question was too abstract, so he wasn’t able to answer it.
The Right Time
There is a time for avoiding risks and for risking. It is good to avoid trouble-making risks in the classroom, but it’s bad to avoid risk if you want to learn how to dance. If you know when to risk, then you can tell the difference between taking a good shot, becoming the team hero, and taking desperate shots that cost you the game.
The Secret Closet
How do you decide when it is the right time to risk or avoid risk? One important tool is to look at the “Stuff I Can’t See.” That secret closet is usually packed full of reasons why we do what we do. We can’t just open it up and look at everything, but we CAN be open to what comes out. Doing so will help us gain some understanding why we act the way we do. That, in turn, will help us decide when to risk and when to not risk. This is an ongoing discussion in CiViL Groups, and we’ve just started.