Week 3
Short Writing Assignment
Due at 12 midnight on Wednesday to your Collab dropbox folder
Last summer, I capitulated to what seemed like constant marketing directives and bought a “pop psychology” book called The Power of Habit. It had some interesting examples and conclusions and I enjoyed reading it in my hammock. One point I found relevant to our current project together concerned the ways that habits can help you by creating a set, or automatic, response to a difficult situation. An example from the book described how Starbucks employees are taught to deal with angry customers. I’ve never worked at Starbucks but I can easily imagine that it’s really stressful to deal with angry (or crazy) customers. Without training, employees are likely to freak out, get angry themselves, and possibly start yelling back. As satisfying as this might feel for the employee, it’s not what the Starbucks company wants to happen. As a solution, they ask their employees to make a plan of response for dealing with an angry customer, along the lines of “When a crazy person comes at me, what’s the first thing I’ll do? What’s the second?” Starbucks is asking its employees to proactively make a habit -- a set of automatic responses -- to deal with a difficult situation, so that when that difficult situation occurs they can feel relatively calm and act well. Their training kicks in and they act without much thought, i.e. as if that action were a habit.
We are all starting a new year, and you are starting college, which is a category with a lot of social significance in American culture. College is kind of a big deal and one of the clearest ways some Americans mark a transition between adolescence and adulthood. (Although only a minority of Americans attend college, let alone graduate.) Transitions can be hard, and the first year of college could be especially challenging in all sorts of ways.
Therefore for your short writing assignment this week, I’m asking you to spend some time imaging what could be the three most difficult things you face in the next eight months. These challenges (or problems, or stressors) could come from school work, dorm life, athletics, family dynamics, dating, hooking up, parties, or anything else. Think seriously and personally about it and try to anticipate stumbling blocks that you are most likely to encounter. In this, I’m not asking for generic answers about, say, balancing school work and play time, but for you to reflect on what you know about yourself and use that to imagine what might be difficult for you.
Then please brainstorm some ways to handle or respond to the three problems you’ve just described. Trying to be as specific as possible. What would be the best ways to respond to the stressors you’ve imagined? What would be the first step? The second? The last? Be careful not to describe a response that might be honest, but less than ideal, such as, “I’ll freak out.” In this writing, you’re explaining what you think would be the best responses, not your most typical responses, unless those are the same things.
To summarize, this assignment asks you to:
1) Imagine the three most difficult things you’ll face in your first year of college, in any context. Keep in mind that you’re not limited to “college” stuff. If you imagine that, say, missing your friends from high school will be the biggest stressor, that’s a perfectly acceptable answer;
2) Spend some time imagining the best ways you could respond to each of the three problems you’ve identified. Try to be as specific as possible and describe what you should do, how you can respond, or people with whom you could talk.
I am imagining an essay with three big paragraphs, one for each of the possible stressors and your plans of action. If you’d like to organize your essay another way, please feel free.
If you would like to change any names or situations to make them seem more anonymous, please do. I will not share the content of your essay with anyone.
As lovely as it might be to imagine a year with no stressors at all, this kind of forward planning will hopefully help you triumph over whatever comes your way.
