Monday, September 18, 2017

Your hidden talent?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question.

What is one of your hidden talents?

Once again, my students are brimming with talent. "Sleeping" and "procrastinating" (and variants thereon) were popular, of course --- remember, these are undergraduates. They don't yet know how to sugarcoat those as "restoring my equilibrium" and "organizing my schedule around my personal priorities".

The fundamental talents to cover the bottom part of Maslow's hierarchy.

  • guessing all the ingredients used in a dish
  • catching gummy bears in my mouth (<-- a="" addendum="" an="" disputed="" in="" later="" li="" student="" this="">
  • navigating with cardinal directions (I'm bad at left and right though...)
  • I can distinguish flavors in food really well.
  • putting too much cinnamon in everything somehow

Psychological, middling-Maslow needs might be met by:

  • Calming down a group of 30+ children.
  • appearing unexpectedly

And the only thing for self-actualization is, of course, self-reference and other circular reasoning:

  • Hiding my talents from others.
  • can't tell
  • paying attention to lecture while filling out the attendance sheet

Touché.

I am most astonished by the student who wrote "flying".


This post's theme word is foozle (v), "to botch or bungle", or (n) "a botched attempt at something." I thought I could juggle, but my complete foozle indicates it's a very hidden talent.

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