let's talk this through.

All right.

I always find it cool when something is addressed in class that I'd never really thought about consciously before, but realize that I do it anyway. For instance, on Friday we learned about how we as senders encode messages in different ways depending upon who is going to receive the message and how we predict they'll decode it. This is super true. I have a different blog that my family reads than the one that my friends from home read. Sometimes the same thing will be addressed in both of them, but in differrent ways. They're both true, but focus on different things or aspects of things based on my intended audience; some things get left out or added in, depending on who I think is going to be reading it. Like the missionary letters that people were talking about in class. I wonder if Brock's mom got a letter about him getting mugged by a girl. And if that would make a parent worry more or less.

It kind of makes me think of this short story by Yann Matel in the book The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios. There is a story/thing called "Manners of Dying" where the excecutioner or warden or something from a prison is writing a letter to the mother of an inmate who had been put to death for the crime. He writes it four different ways, though all of the letters describe the same events. But by changing words, you can change connotations and the feeling/impact of what you're saying, and the outcome is different; the recipient may have received the same information no matter how you presented it, but they way they feel about it depends on how you encoded it.

This brings me to the other thing we learned about, which was another model-staircase, this time of the different means by which we do anything (encode our messages, do a new skill, etc). These levels, from the bottom to the top, are as follows:

Unconcious incompetence wherein you're doing something that's kind of dumb, but you don't know better. (Like when you're in first grade and write a note to the boy you have a crush on that says "I LOVE YOU!" and he's not very happy to get it. Not like that's ever happened to me...)
Concious incompetence occurrs when you know better, but somehow convince yourself that it'll be alright. ("I'm sure if I let the class tarantula out of the aquarium, she'll just stay put, strech her legs a little, and definitely won't go anywhere she isn't supposed to!") I may have been mistaken on that one. Forgive me. Based on more recent class discussion, I guess it's more like when you're learning something new and not getting it; it's a lot harder than you'd thought. ("Who'd have thought crocheting this toaster warmer would've been so difficult??")
Concious competence is the stage wherein you most easily get on other people's nerves, because you've just learned a new skill and want to try it out, but you've got a way to go before you've mastered it. ("Wait, take your hands off your ears, I know I'll hit that note next time...")
Unconcious competence is that stage of anything which we all hope to reach, when something good we've been working on clicks and becomes natural. (if you're able to dance without thinking about it/severely crippling your partner; I can only hope that this will be true of me some day. And I'm sure anyone I've ever danced with hopes so, too.)

Fin. 'Till luego, comrades.