Retrospective
Aside from the test post and the post on the economist under whose name I'm writing—George Akerlof—this is my 4th publication. As usual, I read other students' most recent posts prior to working on mine, and it appeared to me that many people claimed to have made connections between the posts, in particular when talking about transaction costs and opportunism. Upon further reflection, I never even attempted to intertwine the posts no matter how apparent the connection between the concepts themself has become. This made me wonder if I had been missing the point of writing all this time.
It was harder to address the topics at first since they seemed to be very abstract. For example, the mental experiment of Illinibucks is much easier to write about than an abstract exploration of what opportunism happens to be. As with any other concepts that are meant to enhance your mental model, it took time for all the ones we discussed to sink in and become internalized. Essentially, when asked if there were connections with the course themes that were more obvious than others, I would answer that there weren't any, since all of them were ambiguous at first. That changed with time as it should have not because the themes changed, but merely because the time passed.
My writing process hasn't evolved. I always read other students' posts before working on my own. That helps getting context when things are unclear. What I find most useful are the professor's comments on my classmates' posts. I then write up the post in one sitting, publish it and come back to it a few hours later to take a second look and occasionally make minor changes.
Many have addressed talking about their personal experiences. I have thoughts on that too. I have to acknowledge that speaking from personal experience must be the most effective way to apply the concepts, yet I personally prefer not to. Not because of shying away, but because it is a simple matter of private things that need not to be disclosed in a classroom setting and I would always prefer to be given a theoretical situation to consider (as with Illinibucks) and apply the concepts to it. That being said, I also have to acknowledge that I was struck when reading others' experiences with organizations when working as interns—I became slightly more appreciative of my past work settings since they were substantially better than those others described. Although that wouldn't have been so if not for the effort put in from my side too.
Either way, I think the prompts are great to write about and they do help. It wouldn't hurt if their descriptions were longer so that the expectations were more clear.
It was harder to address the topics at first since they seemed to be very abstract. For example, the mental experiment of Illinibucks is much easier to write about than an abstract exploration of what opportunism happens to be. As with any other concepts that are meant to enhance your mental model, it took time for all the ones we discussed to sink in and become internalized. Essentially, when asked if there were connections with the course themes that were more obvious than others, I would answer that there weren't any, since all of them were ambiguous at first. That changed with time as it should have not because the themes changed, but merely because the time passed.
My writing process hasn't evolved. I always read other students' posts before working on my own. That helps getting context when things are unclear. What I find most useful are the professor's comments on my classmates' posts. I then write up the post in one sitting, publish it and come back to it a few hours later to take a second look and occasionally make minor changes.
Many have addressed talking about their personal experiences. I have thoughts on that too. I have to acknowledge that speaking from personal experience must be the most effective way to apply the concepts, yet I personally prefer not to. Not because of shying away, but because it is a simple matter of private things that need not to be disclosed in a classroom setting and I would always prefer to be given a theoretical situation to consider (as with Illinibucks) and apply the concepts to it. That being said, I also have to acknowledge that I was struck when reading others' experiences with organizations when working as interns—I became slightly more appreciative of my past work settings since they were substantially better than those others described. Although that wouldn't have been so if not for the effort put in from my side too.
Either way, I think the prompts are great to write about and they do help. It wouldn't hurt if their descriptions were longer so that the expectations were more clear.
It looks like you missed the post on effective teams. I wonder why that was as you are otherwise a very conscientious student.
ReplyDeleteYou actually were pretty honest disclosing that you wait for other students to post on a topic and read what they have written (and my comments too) rather than dive right into the topic yourself. So, let me ask a question about this. Does it occur to you that you may be blocking some learning this way, but not discovering things on your own but rather letting others do the exploration on your behalf? I do think that as a life skill well beyond the time you are a students that such self-discovery is an important skill to develop. How might you go about learning it? Is it reasonable to aspire to some attempts at this in the second half of the course?
I appreciate your not wanting to divulge your personal experiences, but I wonder if you might consider (a) still making connections to them and then (b) writing them up in such a way that they remain sufficiently veiled. One of the purposes of writing under and alias is to allow you the freedom to do this without fear that you are disclosing information that will subsequently get you into trouble. I also want to assure you that my interest in you doing this is only because it will make you learn better. I have no stake in understanding your personal situation otherwise.
You might also consider writing a post on something other than the prompt. This may be a way for you to address all of these issues on your own. Ultimately, you need to learn how to do this.