One of my favorite bloggers has written a series of posts about some of the distinctions he's seen between people. The one I find most applicable to this situation is a post on something he called Incrementalists & Completionists. It argues that people have two different ways of getting things done: some just want something done, and others want to make sure that that the things that gets done, whatever it is, is done right, and done right the first time.
The strikes me as basically the fundamental difference between Felicity and Rebecca. Felicity ready to jump in and do something, even without complete knowledge, while Rebecca views that as a dangerous approach and really wants to understand the situation. One of the posts that a classmate wrote mentioned that they saw the difference between Felicity and Rebecca as the fact that Felicity was a "doer" and Rebecca was, well... not. I feel like that paints Felicity in a positive light and Rebecca is the negative, which was never my intent, for a couple of reasons.
First off, I think that they're both "doers," they just "do" in very different ways. Felicity's an incrementalist. Rebecca probably thinks Felicity is reckless and isn't really "doing" anything but making a mess. Rebecca a completionist. It's not that she's not doing anything, it's that her "doing" involves a lot more prep work first. Rebecca views that as part of the "doing," not separate.
(As an aside, with the number of times I put "do"and "doing" in that paragraph, I feel a little bit like someone's going to think I'm talking about something else entirely...)
The second reason that, despite being a Felicity, I'm not so quick to put her in a fantastic light is that I'm seeing right now, firsthand, some of the negative consequences of Incrementalist type behavior. I first starting feeling sick maybe four weeks ago. I took it easy for a couple of days, but there were things to do, and I didn't want to leave them off, and I was busy. I was much sicker the next week, and I again took a few days off of classes. But then I didn't want to get too behind, so I went back at it, and relapsed again.
I've been so focused on not getting behind in the short-term that long-term, things are slipping a lot and I have now been sick for four weeks. Perhaps, in this instance, letting myself get completely well and only falling behind once would have been preferable.
Kim,
ReplyDeleteI liked your re-evaluation and more balanced view of Felicity and Rebecca. Then again, don't put Felicity in too bad of a light- sometimes Rebecca's wait and deliberate for to long and never get anything done. (Again, this is coming from a person who feel's that they are a Rebecca.)
Also, your "aside" made me laugh out loud. Sophmoric humor, I know, but still funny.
I'm not sure the H1N1 or whatever else it is that ails you is the best example of the difference between Rebecca and Felicity. Wearing my administrator's hat, I think the Campus planning for the flu didn't work well in communicating with individual instructors, who were already in the middle of the semester when the messages from above arrived. So they couldn't vary their requirements much if at all and, unfortunately, communicated to the students that with regard to their coursework it was business as usual. What is a student to do in that case? In any event, we all hope you get well soon.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, here is some silliness to cheer you up, a variation on your own theme. I like Limericks and below are a couple. Your name choices defy rhyming so I modified them in a transparent way to get the desired effect.
There was a serious minded student named Becky.
Who was too earnest to ever say, "what the hecky?"
For course projects she would deliberately plan,
Insisting that complete before the implementation began.
So by semester's end, the project was a wrecky.
There was a quite different student named Felix.
Whose logic sometimes twisted like a double helix.
He was quick on his feet.
So got things done tout de suite.
But afterward his creation needed a real fix.
I agree with your interpretation of your own blog post. That's pretty much how I referenced it in my own post that week. Nice follow up.
ReplyDelete