A Neophyte Reflects on Kairos

In 1993 a movie entitled Searching for Bobby Fischer was released. It dramatized the early life of a chess prodigy. It included the usual lessons not only for young people but also for adults. If improperly aggrandized, competitive activities can bring out the worst in parents, as anyone who has been the unfortunate witness of shrill epithets coming from the stands of a little league game can attest. I don't want to ruin the ending, but since it is PG, I don't think I'm violating any morality of spectatorship when I confirm that the movie ends happily.

The young boy whose life the movie was based on is Josh Waitzkin. Aside from doing many other interesting things with his life, he provided annotations and commentary for the Chessmaster computer game series. In Chessmaster 9000, Mr. Waitzkin annotates about a dozen of his personal games. In one of these games, after the opening moves have been played and the middle game has been reached, he describes himself as entering into a deep-think.

He then describes a moment during this deep-think in which he realizes that, given the unique placement of pieces on the board in this game, he had a problem. If he followed the general prescriptions of chess, (get a knight to a central outpost, try to secure the two bishops, don't push pawns around your king, etc.), which strong players are inclined to do, his attack would be stifled, his opponent would have equalized, and, thus, his position would be weak. Mr. Waitzkin did not want to have a weak position, so he needed to figure out a new plan over the board.

During his deep-think, it occurred to him, however dimly or imperfectly, that every attack in chess and also every defense in chess requires an ideal temporal moment. To begin an attack at move 21, when it would have been better to begin it at move 22, will, assuming the defender seizes the initiative, blunt the attack. In his final analysis of the game, which he won, Mr. Waitzkin focuses on the temporal intricacies, not only of this game, not only in the game of chess, but in almost all human activities. When I think about his commentary from the perspective of a neophyte writing consultant, I think of kairos.

I've only recently been introduced to this very rich and complicated concept, but already I've begun to consistently reflect on it. Some of the most famous names of ancient Greece have given a definition of kairos, including Plato and Pythagoras, but these proposed definitions, although similar, do not perfectly square with each other. For Pythagoras, kairos is both a cosmological force and a force that grounds human relations. As a cosmological force, it acts as a kind of ontological bridge that unites the disparate four classical elements (fire, air, earth, and water). In other words,  the existence of matter requires kairos. 

As a force that grounds human relations, kairos governs the appropriateness and morality of our actions. Quoting from Imblichus's "Life of Pythagoras," Carl Glover a professor at Mount St. Mary's University writes: "For those of us who are angry or enraged, some are so seasonably, and some unseasonably [. . .]"

Here's how I cash this idea out: if I am driving home, I may experience judicious (seasonable) anger if another driver is nearby and operating his vehicle recklessly. But if I hold on to this anger too long, say, by subjecting a fast food employee to a profane tirade because he forgot my BBQ sauce, my anger becomes vicious (unseasonable) because I have allowed it to transgress the kairotic boundary.

Plato's definition seems to lack a cosmological component. It seems to be more focused on rhetoric and the interaction between human beings.Taken from the Phaedrus, Glover quotes the Platonic Socrates. He writes: "It is only when he has...grasped the concept of the propriety of time (kairos)--when to speak and when to hold his tongue...It is only then, and until then that the finishing and perfecting touches will have been given to his science."

The definition given in the Phaedrus has a certain simplicity, a kind of forceful colloquialism. If I were to paraphrase Plato's definition to contemporary people, I might once again draw an example from film: in "The Godfather," before the violence begins, Marlon Brando's character chastises his son, played by James Caan, who has spoken out of turn, by saying to the other crime syndicate representatives something along the order of, "Once again my son speaks when he should be listening."

Since, for Plato, kairos is an awareness of knowing when to speak and when to remain silent, and then having the moral strength to respect this knowledge in practice, the character of Sonny Corleone would never experience it.

Like the word katharsis, kairos is a Greek word that seems to defy the modern attempt to understand it completely. Unlike katharsis, kairos has not been incorporated into our vernacular, which seems strange to me, given its ubiquitous nature to our endeavors.

In the writing center, consultants are encouraged to understand kairos, to think of ways to cultivate it. In the writing center, the importance of each temporal moment of a session provides an opportunity to maximize the intellectual and emotional interaction between the consultant and the writer, thus it makes sense that kairos would be so important in this community. But it seems like an appreciation of kairos has as much to offer to those outside the writing center as it does to those of us inside it.

Have you ever told a joke that was intended to make someone laugh? I know I have.

Sometimes we achieve our intended effect, and sometimes we do not. Only now do I realize the importance which kairos plays in the success or failure of a joke. And more than the success or failure of a single articulation of a single joke at single moment, kairos provides the foundation for the concept of "sense of humor."

To borrow an idea from one of Thomas Edison's most famous (and probably hyperbolic) aphorisms, we might say that having a good sense of humor is ninety-nine percent kairos, and one percent humor. I think most people intuitively understand how important timing is to humor. An improper understanding of timing will not only ruin the potential humor of a situation; it will, in many instances, actually turn the situation hostile. Anyone who doubts me, imagine the following situation: Eddie Murphy's Raw being shown in a 3rd grade classroom. Not so funny anymore, is it.

Have you ever heard the phrase esprit de l'escalier? Even if you are unfamiliar with this darling little French idiomatic phrase, I would guess that you are familiar with the the cascade of emotions it encapsulates.

Normally, this cascade of emotions begins with you uttering the f word, some of you express yourselves raucously, I usually whisper my cusses. Regardless of how loud you howl, I would imagine that the pain we experience is fairly uniform. Now you know what you should have said then. Now you know the words. Now they are being ejected like pumice from a volcano. Now you have the instruments to efface his contemptuous smirk. Now you can metamorphose his fleer into a frown.

But the moment is gone. The past cannot be retrieved.  "^%&*!"  Now you feel twice-cursed. Not only are you cursed to know now what you should have known then, but the curse is redoubled because you know now that the then which you squandered can never be redressed. Kairos has its complications. I guess every rose has its thorns.  

Have you ever watched a high-level athletic contest? (Anyone who has read my other blog posts probably knows where I'm headed with this line of thinking.) For example, in 1997, The Chicago Bulls played The Utah Jazz in the NBA finals. In game 1, the score was tied with 7.5 seconds remaining. The Bulls had possession of the ball, but more importantly, they had a shooting-guard by the name of Michael Jordan. In situations like these, Jordan needs to recognize the various contingencies of the moment, and then balance those contingencies that compete with each other.

Jordan needs to get a shot off, preferably a good shot--a high-percentage shot that gives him a clear look at the rim--but he doesn't have a lot of time, so correcting a strategic miscalculation isn't possible. Of course, if he begins his maneuver too early, even if he makes the shot, the Jazz still may have time left to either tie the game or win it with a 3. Thus, in an ideal situation, the ball will fall through the hoop as the buzzer sounds. Bulls win.

Jordan is not playing in an empty gym, though. The Jazz will try and stop him; they will use the clock to their advantage. If, before the ball is inbounded, Jordan commits himself to one course of action (shooting the ball), then he will not have the nimbleness to adjust to The Jazz defense. If The Jazz double-team him, he may have a wide-open teammate who would, if a good pass is delivered, be in a better position than Jordan would be to win the game.

But if the pass is delivered too early, The Jazz might be able to rotate over to the shooter and contest or block his shot. If the pass is delivered too late, then either the shooter may rush his shot and miss or he may not have enough time to get a shot off in the first place. In either case, Jordan will have frittered away an opportunity.

Lots of contingencies to consider, all of them dependent on the temporal moment of the game. What does this remind you of? It reminds me of kairos. Michael Jordan had kairos: he surveyed the floor; he identified the positions of the defenders; then, he made his move, but not too quickly; he got to a spot on the floor that would allow him to put up a high percentage shot; he got a clear look at the rim; he got feet set; he released the ball from his hands with about a second left. The buzzer sounded, then the ball went into the hoop. Bulls win. Kairos wins.

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger

It is about that time of year again. You know what I am talking about.

Midterms.

It is that joyful time of year where our minds are filled with all the many group projects, tests, and papers we have to do, study for, and write. It is also about the time we start to anticipate that big end of term paper.

Hyperbolic thoughts like, “I’m going to die. This paper is going to kill me, and if this one doesn’t, one of the three others I have to write will!” inevitably passes [inevitably pass] through our minds.

Fall is here. It is time for football and bonfires, camping and s’mores, Halloween, and hot apple cider - that is, for everyone who doesn’t have multiple research papers or that one huge paper to write.

So how do we get past the “This is going to be the end of me” thoughts and attack this paper?

It is a mountain that just seems too high to climb. It is the Mt. Everest of papers, and we do not feel like one of those people who can withstand the frigid air (the requirements of the assignment), the turbulent weather (life still going on around us) or low oxygen levels (writer’s block?) in order to get to the top (to finish the paper).

Take comfort in the fact that while Everest may have taken some lives, as far as I know, no one has ever died from writing too many papers or too much for one paper. (So for those of you looking to take a page out of the Wedding Crasher’s guidebook: you cannot use the line, “We lost a lot of good men out there” for this.)

However, you can think of it in terms of the old adage and new Kelly Clarkson song: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

So stand a little taller knowing this mountainous paper will shortly turn into a mole hill or a grain of sand.

You can do it. You can, and you will. Perhaps you can even take the approach, as I’ve mentioned before, of breaking the writing up into sections to do one at a time.

You will get it done. Just remember – what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

A Writer's Motivation

Dan Pink’s presentation “Drive: The Surprising Truth about what Motivates Us” (video shown below) discusses the science of motivation in the workplace. With the visual help from RSAnimate, Pink makes a surprising argument. 

When a task becomes more complicated than grunt work and requires some conceptual, creative thinking, exterior motivators no longer work (Pink). In fact, exterior motivators have the opposite effect. A large prize puts more pressure on an employee and reduces the chances of success. 

Too often employers find the work of their staff to be flat, insufficient, and simply bad. Offering a larger bonus only makes the matters worse. These descriptions of performance are not limited to employer-to-employee relationships. Many college professors make the same comments in regards to their students' work.

Motivation is a common topic in pedagogy just as it is in the business world. What exactly motivates students? If the grade is not a motivator, what else is there?

Just as employees, students perform better with a sense of having purpose, a sense of contributing to society, a sense of mastering a skill. When students believe they are leaving a mark on the world, they are better motivated.  With better motivation and a lack of pressure from an exterior motivator such as money or a good grade, the final product may improve immensely.

Students cannot escape the pressure grades place on performance. However, they can move the focus away from the grade and complete the task for more important reasons. This may sound like heresy. The grade is the goal; the goal is the grade! 

But the philosophy of grade-getting turns a student’s work into basic hoop jumping that Pink argues may hinder the performance.

If a student can integrate their work into a community that values the work (i.e. study groups, writing centers, club organizations) and/or believes the tasks will lead to a pride of accomplishment, then the work they produce will have much stronger potential. 

A Luddite and His Dictionaries

At some indeterminate moment in the past few years, I began to think of my computer as an elder colleague who has possession of a magic lamp. As long as I treat this colleague with a modicum of respect, my colleague will intercede on my behalf, and my wish will be granted.

I never see him, but I know the genie must be powerful because my wishes are multifarious and kaleidoscopic. One minute I may wish to know what time Booth closes on Saturday. Having satisfied that desire, I may wish to watch a chess match between Garry Kasparov and Judit Polgar with voice-over move annotations. Perhaps, after viewing a purely cerebral contest, I may develop a taste for something a little more physical. Twelve seconds later, I'm watching Michael Jordan put up a 46-7-5 line against The Pistons in game 3 of the 1989 Eastern Conference Finals. (For the record, the shot Jordan makes at the end of regulation is the most underrated game-winner in his career, and maybe in NBA history.)

All this the genie has accomplished, yet it hasn't even begun to show what its capable of.

• You wanna bet a horse in The Kentucky Derby?  Your wish is my command.
• You wanna shop for a new bed? Your wish is my command. 
• You wanna say goodnight to your children when you're in Oslo and they're in Montreal? Your wish is my command.

We've gotten used to hearing those five words, haven't we?

There is nothing inherently wrong with using computers for many of the tasks we use them for. However, there is a risk that our reliance on silicon-based technology will become insidious, especially for those of us who want to become better writers.

An important part of writing is composing sentences, and an important part of composing sentences is combining words in distinct, meaningful ways The more words you know, the more sentences you can create. The more sentences you can create, the more thoughts you can convey in your writing. The more thoughts you can convey in your writing, the more conceptual distinctions you will be able to express in your writing. The more conceptual distinctions you are able to express in your writing, the clearer you will think. And isn't thinking clearly an intrinsic good? Maybe not. Still, I would suggest that thinking clearly is strongly correlated with As. 

Whatever reason you use to justify the goodness of thinking clearly, thinking clearly requires strong diction. But how will you learn words that you don't know? How will you find the perfect word to express a thought that took weeks to ripen? 

One tactic is to rub that magic lamp, to make another wish. An easy tactic, if you ask me.

When our wish is new and ardent, we may prefer an obsequious genie who does our bidding without complaint, but, in my experience, such complaisance eventually begins to do more harm than good. You begin to yearn for the slow struggle of overcoming a challenge. Visiting Thesaurus.com is not going to get the job done.

A student looking up the word "lazy," in an online thesaurus may not fully appreciate the subtle differences which exist between each entry. Thus, to use an online thesaurus to find a couple of ill-fitting and contorted synonyms for the sake of semantic variety, in many cases, will backfire. Your paper may end up sounding worse than it did before you used the online thesaurus. 

It is an honorable goal: You want to vary the vocabulary in your paper; you want to make your paper more interesting to read by employing all the spices the English language hides behind its cabinet doors. But just like a chef requires more than a white fluffy hat to be a chef, a writer requires more than powerful magic lamp to be a writer.

Allow me to suggest a better way: Use a dictionary, a collegiate dictionary for the road, the Shorter Oxford for your apartment.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that you can't look up a word you don't know. True.

But, surely, during your many academic engagements (the novel you're reading in English class, the essay from The Wall Street Journal you're reading for economics class, the discussion you have with your Philosophy professor) you occasionally come across an unfamiliar word. When it happens, you can either keep a list, say, with a ten word limit, and then go look up all ten when you find a convenient time to do so, or you can look up a word immediately after encountering it. 

Now, again, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that the genie has a dictionary also. You're thinking that it would be a gross inefficiency to take the time to look a word up in a print dictionary, when rubbing the lamp is so much quicker. I'll grant that there are times and circumstances when using an online dictionary is appropriate (especially when you need help pronouncing foreign phrases or proper names), but don't rely on it. 

Take a trip, take the scenic route. Riffle the pages of the 11th edition. I bet you'll learn more in two months than the genie taught you in two years. 

A Little Variety, A Little Spice

What makes an essay, a research paper, a case study, or a novel easier and more fun to read? What makes us think, “This is so much easier to grasp than that other boring, dense material we are forced to read most of the time?”

The answer: Sentence variety.

Of course, everyone has read those really long, elaborate sentences where we have to take deep breaths just to continue reading them, and then have to read them again because we still do not know what it said because there is so much information, jargon, and complexity to it – much like this one.

Break it up. It makes the information easier to comprehend the first time. The reader recognizes this unconsciously most of the time, don’t you think?

By interspersing different types of sentences – declarative, imperative, interrogative, exclamatory, simple, compound and complex – your writing becomes more aesthetically pleasing to the readers’ eye...and mind, for that matter.

That is just the way it is. So, do it. Do we not want to make our writing more appealing to our readers in whatever way we can? That is what we are always trying to do, especially when we are shooting to get a good grade!

The best way to check for this is to read our writing aloud. Listen to our voices and pay attention to when we have to take a deep breath just to finish the sentence. Most times this tells us that we are connecting too many ideas in one sentence. Essentially, we are attempting to cram as much information as possible in one sentence instead of breaking it up.

Again, break it up.  Add a little variety, a little spice to the writing! It will change life as we know it, and make our readers happy and able to comprehend what we are saying the first time around.

Can I Improve?

Students who seek assistance in writing centers often say something to this effect, “I suck at writing.” They believe this wholeheartedly. Be it from years of harsh criticisms, papers saturated in red ink, or a lack of positive reinforcement, students build layers of deep beliefs that they are innately designed to be poor writers. 

But what if someone were to simply tell one of those poor writers that they can improve? Would they?

Dr. Carol Dweck, Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, says that “people with a fixed mindset believe that their traits are just givens. They have a certain amount of brains and talent and nothing can change that” (mindsetonline.com). This describes the “I-suck-at-writing” mentality often seen in writing centers.  

However, Dweck presents an alternative mindset: the growth mindset.  “People with a growth mindset,” says Dweck, “see their qualities as things that can be developed through their dedication and effort” (mindsetonline.com). Thankfully, Dweck argues that one can change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.

But how does one do that? How does one change a I-suck-at-writing writer to a confident writer?

On “This AmericanLife” host Ira Glass discussed a similar topic centered around education and cognitive development with researcher Paul Tough. Tough presents a small and simple program where college students meet a high school student a couple of times a year to relay only one message (thisamericanlife.org). “The only thing they were to say to them,” said Tough, “is simply this idea: you can improve your intelligence”(thisamericanlife.org). Tough says that studies show that the program had a 100% success rate with students catching up to their peers in performance (thisamericanlife.org).

Students can change from fixed to growth mindsets and from poor to confident writers. And that's change we all need to believe in.

As the program Tough presented shows us, changing a student from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset can begin with the simple phrase, "you can improve." In other words, the first step to changing perceived 'bad' writers into a confident writer is through positive reinforcements and projecting a you-can-do-this attitude.

When a writing consultant hears the phrase “I suck at writing,” they should hear it as a wonderful opportunity to plant a seed to a growth mindset to rebuild students' confidence and start cultivating their minds.  It may only take a student to hear this message a couple of times a year and writing consultants in writing centers are in the perfect environment to capitalize on this approach!  

 

Listen to NPR's Dr. Moira Gunn interview Dr. Carol Dweck here to learn more about fixed and growth mindsets.

fort. Sure they’re happy if they’re brainy or talented, but that’s just the starting

Beware, Genre Boundaries

There's a scene in Penny Marshall's 1988 film Big where Robert Loggia's character (the owner of a toy company) is drawing a distinction between the content of a marketing report and the activity that takes place inside a large toy store on the weekend. The aforementioned distinction is addressed to Tom Hanks' character, (a twelve-year old boy who after making a wish at a carnival, undergoes a Kafkaesque metamorphosis into a thirty year-old man), who with ingenuous befuddlement replies: "What's a marketing report?"

Whatever a marketing report is, a safe assumption to make is that it will both look and read much differently than a Batman comic.

A marketing report belongs to one kind of genre. A Batman comic belongs to a different kind genre.

A marketing report is intended for one kind of discourse community. A Batman comic is intended for a different kind of discourse community.

Presumably, it would be a mistake for an employee of a large toy company or any large company for that matter (except maybe if the employee works for Disney or Time Warner) to produce a marketing report with a series of highly decorated square panels and speech bubbles.

Conceding my ignorance on the matter, I would hazard a guess that, unlike a Batman comic, a marketing report does not contain a plot or bother to develop either a protagonist or an antagonist, unless the antagonists are defined as being the other companies that hold greater market share. Likewise, a Batman comic will rarely delve into issues of market saturation or how the internet is changing the 6-12 age demographic in regard to action figures, which are not tied directly to a TV show or a film.

Of course, other genres exist besides marketing reports and Batman comics. I found this out the hard way when I began working at the writing center. Instead of a market report, I was instructed to compose a memo. Whatever a memo was, I knew it was different than a Socratic Dialogue; I knew it was different than a biography on John Milton. I just didn't know in what specific ways it was different.

Lucky for me, the Directors of the EIU writing center prepared for the unsophisticated consultant. I don't remember if I asked the Assistant Director for a sample of an ideal memo, or if she anticipated that someone would ask, and thus made the asking moot. However it happened, the director informed the class that three sample memos from bygone years were available for our perusal. The first chance I got I seized the folder and began to peruse, but only after whispering a sigh of relief. Ahh.

I supposed I could have guessed. I wasn't completely ignorant. Like I say, I had a pretty good idea of what a memo was not. I have written a lot of papers, for a lot of different classes, at a lot of different institutions, under the guidance of a lot of different professors, and not once had any of them referred to any assignment as a "memo."

Still, guessing is a risky epistemic strategy. Probably a better strategy is to provide an unsophisticated student, who is being introduced to a unfamiliar genre, with an ideal example. In this way, the student can get a sense of the specific differences that delimit the unfamiliar genre with the genres he is already familiar with.

Unlike Batman comics and marketing reports, genre differences can be more subtle. The more subtle the difference, the more likely a student is to transgress a generic boundary. For example, I learned two rules in my first composition course that did not hold in other courses.

First, I learned that when writing an essay, the conclusion should not include the phrase "In conclusion..." A few months later, I took a speech class. My peroration was marked down because I omitted the phrase "In conclusion..." Ouch, that one stung. My  indignant diatribe did nothing except make me thirsty.

Second, I learned that when writing an essay, one should never use the first person singular "I."  One should instead use the term "the reader." Fast-forward a few semesters, and I am sitting across from one of my many philosophy professors, when he asks me: "Why don't you use "I" in your papers? It is so much easier to read and more natural."

Avail yourselves of my foolishness. Do not presume that every paper you write will be in the same genre. Do not presume that every paper you write will be directed to the same discourse community.

Citations - Parking, APA, MLA, & the Purdue OWL

Citations, citations, citations.

Most of us hate them. Whether they come in the form of parking tickets (of which I received two…in two different cities in a matter of two days) or in the form of a reference list, they are ever the cherry on top of a bad day sundae. (Sense the sarcasm.)

Citing sources is not hard. However, when we're juggling a million different thoughts and tasks and our attention is otherwise occupied, it makes getting them done correctly hard.

MLA or APA? Italics or quotation marks? Underline or parentheses? Citing is a never ending balancing act of the memory. There are no easy ways to remember which rules apply to which style. There are no pneumonic devices, at least that I know of, to jog the memory.

So … how do we get it right? Instead of taking an “educated” guess (we learned them both at some point, right? So we have a 50/50 shot of getting it correct.), why not seek the exact formula we need?

Easier said than done, right?

Wrong.

There is a handy-dandy website called Purdue Online Writing Lab or Purdue OWL for short that makes the entire process of citing – for lack of a better term – idiot proof. I use it weekly.

There are examples for every different kind of source. They show exactly where the author’s name, the title of the source, page numbers, publisher’s name, etc. all go. Essentially, there is no way to go wrong when using this website. We just transfer the information from our source into the “blanks” of the example and voilá! We are done citing.

The moral of this story: when in doubt, put some change in that meter or go to Purdue OWL’s website to double-check how to do in-text citations and bibliographies.

For specific links to guides for APA or MLA, here are you go-to sites:

• APA Formatting and Style Guide
• MLA Formatting and Style Guide

In addition, you can find both of these links -- and more -- on the "Resources for Writers" page of the EIU Writing Center's webpage.