Learning by teaching

When I do things for myself, I rarely pause and consider how I do the things that I do. I just do them. Writing is one of these things. I just sit down and start banging my thoughts into the keyboard. I occasionally stop and correct, edit, rewrite, but generally what you see here is a straight dump out of my grey matter after I’ve pondered on it for a bit. I have no training in writing though. In college I learned how to design things. Part of that process involved conceptualizing and mental investigation, followed by the verbal definition of the task at hand. That process has become so ingrained into my head that I don’t really even think about the how anymore, I just do. My training was in Graphic Design, but the process is the same for any design discipline, be it Industrial Design, Architecture, Landscape Design, Package Design (my minor study), whatever. My Senior year I was invited – through my participation in the College of Arts & Science’s Honors Program and a friend studying Architecture – to participate in a Graduate Level Seminar in the School of Architecture entitled “The Systems Approach & the Evil of Design.” The professor was a brilliant man, and a master of the Socratic Method. His theory was that no matter how systemic you approach your design goal, at some point you surrender to the intuitive and just go with it. The gut-driven, or as he called it “off-hand” decision may be miniscule, but it will always be there. When I write for business I do my best to approach it systemically, but when I sit down and pursue my own creative whim all my training becomes subconscious. It is still there, as I become conscious of it when I stop banging and start proofing & editing! To me writing therefore is a branch of my design training. So too my Photography. When I am shooting photos my brain is fully engaged and involved in composition, light, shadow, etc. It is hard to verbalize the mental gymnastics that go on though.

Late last week though I found myself in a position to teach rather than do. I found it a fascinating exercise in thought process. Like being in school once again and having to verbalize a process. My son Christopher was writing cover letters for scholarship applications. He asked me for some help. Chris is a smart, capable kid, but this is a task he hasn’t yet tackled in life. He wrote a draft cover letter and sent it to me to look over. It had all the information that it required, it was just… dull. If you think about it a scholarship application cover letter has to include a list of information, as it serves as an introduction to who you are, what you have accomplished, projected goals, and a little begging (“choose me, please!”) In a lot of ways it is like a cover letter of a resume/job application, but the begging is more direct. Chris’ draft was just that, a draft. In reality it was an outline, with the points that had to be covered. I wasn’t going to write it for him, but I offered to serve as advisor and editor.

By the way, this process was largely accomplished through Instant Messaging and email. Chris would pop up in my iChat buddy list, say “Hello” and start a conversation. We’d chat back and forth, he’d email me a draft, and I’d chat him suggestions or email back an edit. Chris is 100+ miles away at college so TCP/IP is the primary carrier of our communications. The only time I reverted to voice was once when I had to express a very complex thought process to himand throw out some examples to illustrate the idea. I don’t type well enough to do that in chat! Chris’ dorm room has very spotty cell phone coverage and he has no landline, so we had to arrange the phone call in IM so that he could walk to another spot on campus where his phone would work better.

In the advisory role I made that call and laid out to him my thought process for writing creatively: conceptualize what you have to say, outline it, then change the perspective before you start writing. In this particular case I said to him “you are basically telling your life story in a couple of paragraphs, so here is what you have to do mentally… imagine you are falling off a high cliff and your life is flashing before your eyes… now DESCRIBE what you see. Discard all the irrelevant bits for the purposes of this scholarship, as the committee won’t need to know about 99% of it, but the description is the vital part.”

Think about your favorite books, movies, photographs, etc. The themes they cover are almost all rather common, it is the perspective that makes them memorable and different. That was the lesson I was trying to convey to Chris. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. The scholarship committee will read countless letters that all say the same thing:

“Hi I’m so-and-so and I have done this-and-that. I hope to study this-that-and-the-other, and I’d really appreciate your help. Thank you.”

Yawn. In order to stand out from that crowd it will help to rotate the perspective in your cover letter… provide them with the same data, but in a way that is fresh and different. It does not guarantee that they’ll pick you, but it increases your chances, and gets you past the initial culling of the herd.

I’m glad to say that Chris took the lesson well. I was astounded by how he took my small bit of advice and developed a truly compelling letter. I’m not going to reproduce it for you here*, as I don’t want to provide a gazillion college kids with a formula for a great cover letter (sorry kids, Google fooled you when it brought you here!) but I will say I’m a proud father. I’ve always prided myself on my ability to explain things but I never consciously took it that next step and actually taught. Chris was thankfull, and I was happy to help. He was so jazzed that he wrote a couple of more letters and I helped him refine those as well over the next few days. Those efforts were much better in their early stages based on the lessons learned before. He even told me that he’s looking forward to writing his next class-related paper with this new-found knowledge.

In some ways I found that I was giving him something I always wanted, and in fact still want and need: an editor. I really feel like my writing could be so much better if I had somebody to collaborate with in the process. Somebody to read my stuff BEFORE I hit “publish” and refine it that extra step. Somebody who knows wordsmithing more than I do. Any volunteers? 😉

Best of all though it allowed me to connect with Christopher and materially assist him in the process of learning. Being in college, learning is the ENTIRE focus of his life right now. It is very rewarding for me to be a part of that.

*If you know me and you’re dying to read it you can email me and I’ll send you a copy.