Feedback Thoughts

The first article I read was Megan Bruneau's "5 Tips for Taking Feedback." I've always been an overzealous perfectionist, so the main point that hit me from this article was Bruneau's point that room for improvement is actually a good thing—which fits really well with the Growth Mindset teachings we've been focusing on in this class. As Bruneau says, "having growth areas is a good thing— it means you haven't maxed out on your potential." I find that it's all well and good to say being a perfectionist is counterproductive and self-defeating, but that's one of those to file under the "easier said than done" column. If I think about it in terms of still having room to improve, though, it really is easier.

I also appreciated William Treseder's "Using Harsh Feedback to Fuel Your Career." He made several points that resonated with me, but the most striking one was something I'd never even thought of before—a point about how striving for well-roundedness is a waste of time on certain projects: "Over a few painful years," Treseder says, "I’ve learned to look for collaborators when I’m not good at something. The upside is incredible. What takes me ten grinding hours will take them ten minutes, be higher quality, and they will enjoy doing it." It's an excellent point, and something I'm going to try to keep in mind as I move forward in life.

For the articles on giving feedback, the first one I checked out was "The Difference Between Praise That Promotes Narcissism vs. Healthy Self-Esteem" by Poncie Rutsch. But the article I got the most out of was "Try Feedforward instead of Feedback" by Marshall Goldsmith. He ran a study that found giving feedback about how to improve in the future (rather than looking back at what could've been done better in the past) is more efficient and better-received than traditional feedback. I wouldn't have thought of this, but it makes a ton of sense, and it's something I'm going to try to use on the project feedback this semester.




Image Credit: Laptop by parthshah000. Source: Pixabay.

Week 2 Story: What Comes Around

I was sitting in Trig class, one ragged dress shoe kicked up on the chair in front of me, when Brendan Russ leaned over my desk.

“Tyler, man,” he said, glancing warily across at Mrs. Ramirez. “I need to talk to you.”

I lifted an eyebrow. Russ and I weren’t exactly friends. We got along just fine, and we were next to each other on Ramirez’s assigned seating chart, which also made us occasional math partners. But that was about the extent of it.

It really wasn’t in Russ’s best interests—short, curly-haired Russ, with his polished dress shoes and just-so school uniform—to talk to me.

“Shoot,” I said, unwrapping a piece of gum, only halfway disinterested.

He said, “It’s about my life before,” and I felt my disinterest plummet another few notches. Together, we turned and looked back at his shadow.

Brendan Russ’s shadow was a thing of nightmares—much bigger than he was, hulking and hunched over itself, gnarled and snarling. It had spines and wicked edges and too many arms that never seemed to stop moving. The kind of thing that bewildered you at first—what could a simple creature like Russ have ever done to earn a Shade like that—but that everybody eventually got used to.

It didn’t really matter what he’d done in his past life. Something pretty nasty, sure, and a whole lot of it, if the embodiment of all his sins looked like that.

But in this life, Russ would probably have trouble maiming a fly. So nobody worried too much about it.

“I think I’ve got a lead on what exactly I did,” he said eventually. “Who I was before.”

I snorted. “I think you’ve got a pretty good idea who you were before even without any digging, man.”

“I know.”

He was quiet for a minute, and at first, I didn’t think he was going to answer. I turned back to my trig assignment. Not that it was any more entertaining, but the cost of tuition at Ashford Prep was obscenely high, and I wasn’t letting it go to waste.

Then he said again, stronger this time, “I know. That’s why I have to find out for sure. I need you to track this person down for me. Ask your drug dealer people or whoever.”

I laughed, maybe a little harshly, snapping my gum. “My drug dealer people. Christ, Russ.”

“I’m serious. This is important.”

The bell rang. I looked across the room at Laurel Wesson, who was standing and straightening the lapels of her Ashford blazer. She scowled when she saw me.

“So will you do it?” Russ asked. “Everybody says you’re the guy to go to. I have money.”

I glanced at him. Normally, I’d found it was best to stay out of situations like this. But he looked obstinate in that desperate, teeth-set way people got, and the money was always nice, and I was kind of curious about his Shade despite myself.

“I’ll think about it,” I said absently.

Then I stood and followed Laurel Wesson out of the classroom.

***

Fourth period, I had World History with Mr. Dennis, but I headed across the Quad to Laurel’s study hall instead, keeping pace with her. Eventually—probably when she realized I wasn’t going away—she whirled around, face pale.

“What do you want?” she snapped.

I smiled pleasantly, reaching into my backpack. “I think the real question here is what you want.”

She actually flinched when she saw the manila envelope. At first, I didn’t think she’d touch it, but then she lunged forward at the last second, snatching it out of my hands. Like if she was holding it now, she was suddenly holding all the power, too.

“That’s your copy,” I said. “You can go ahead and keep it.”

I watched her shaky hands as she lifted one of the photos out, but I didn’t look at the picture itself. I didn’t need to see it again.

“The question,” I said again, “is if you still want to be valedictorian.”

She stared across at me, dead-eyed. A blotchy flush was rising up her neck.

“And how much you’re willing to pay to make sure that happens,” I added.

She snorted. “You’re scum, Tyler Strauss. Literal scum of the earth. I didn’t think lowlifes like you actually existed. You’re—”

“Ten minutes late for class,” I interrupted, checking my invisible watch. “Which means I’m fifteen minutes late to the headmaster’s office.”

When she didn’t say anything, just slid the photos back into the envelope and folded the little metal arms firmly closed, I grinned.

“A thousand dollars,” I said. It was a lot of money, but rich kids like her always managed to pay up when it mattered. And Ashford Prep was expensive. “Cash only. All of it by the end of the week, or the headmaster gets a copy of all this too, and the end of the year looks a lot different for you.”

She looked like she was about to cry, and I really didn’t have time for that, so I turned and walked back towards World History.

Beside me, my shadow was mild and amicable, hands in his pockets.

***

Russ tried to corner me at my picnic table after school. When I saw him coming, I nodded at the small ring of guys I’d been talking to, and they scattered. Russ hesitated, fidgeting at the other end of the table.

“Well?” he said. “Think you can get that info for me?”

I looked at his Shade again, all looming menace, and at mine, thin and relaxed and easygoing. I even halfway thought about telling him it was better for him if he didn’t know all the things his past self had done in that other life, that that Russ probably wouldn’t have wanted future versions of himself to know anyways. I knew I wouldn’t.

But he looked determined. And Ashford was expensive.

“What do you want to know?” I asked.

Author's Note: While the Ramayana’s main plot is interesting itself, when I read it with the weekly retelling in mind, I find myself focusing more on small, random details than on the bigger picture. This week, for instance, I was struck by a throwaway line of Sita’s, just after she’s first glimpsed Rama.

Though the pair haven’t even spoken in this life, they knew each other in a previous one, and that connection sparks something that feels like love at first sight. Love, as it turns out, is kind of miserable, and pretty soon Sita is irritated by every happy thing around her, since she can’t be happy herself without Rama. When a bird starts singing outside her window, she cries at it, “The sins I committed in a previous birth have assumed your form and come to torture me now!”

I was really struck by this idea of a physical embodiment of somebody’s sins from a former life, so that’s what I explored with my retelling. More than that, I was curious what kind of impact that would have on people, literally being followed around by all the mistakes they’ve ever made. Through Russ and Tyler, I was able to look at both extremes: someone who desperately wants to know what he’s done wrong, and someone who desperately wants not to, because he already knows what he's doing now.

Bibliography: The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic by R. K. Narayan.

Image Credit: "Money" by 401kcalculator.org. Source: Flickr.

Reading Notes: Narayan's Ramayana, Section B

In this section of the Ramayana, one of the things that really struck me—remember, I’m a sucker for sibling stories, especially brother dynamics—is the fierce protectiveness of Lakshmana towards Rama. I love the fact that it’s the ultra-loyal younger brother who’s always up in arms, ready to fight for his big brother. Like when he learned that scheming was going to prevent Rama from being crowned king, and he picked up his sword and bow, put on his battle dress, and aggressively roamed the streets swearing, “Rama shall be crowned, and whoever comes in the way will be annihilated. Let the whole world come, I’ll destroy everyone who opposes, and pile up their carcasses sky high. I’ll seize the crown and will not rest till I place it on Rama’s head.” I’d definitely be open to taking that fierce younger brother, the older brother he puts above everyone and everything else, and transplanting that bond to a fantasy or sci-fi setting with a more modern feel.

Then again, when Ravana’s love-struck sister was trying to find any way to get to Rama, I also started thinking about doing a story with some kind of enemy alliance, a team-up of two characters who should be number-one enemies and still feel that way themselves, but are more pressured to team up against some other mutual nemesis. The demon promised Rama, “If you marry me, I will teach you all the arts and tricks, magical and others, that make my people superb and invincible. I can teach you how to defeat them, but you must treat me kindly. You must accept me.” And I love the idea of a human and a monster teaming up to go after other monsters, with the allied ones spilling all the trade secrets in exchange for immunity and maybe a little something extra, something a little more sinister. We’ll see.

I also dug the line that Ravana gives here: When Ravana recognized the moon as the moon, he swore at him, “You are worthless, pale-faced, constantly worn out and trying to regain your shape again.” Naturally, I’d twist it around a little and make the moon in question into something a little more complicated—a ghost or wraith or some kind of creature that used to be a person once, trying to pull herself together and get herself back, be human again. Be everything she used to be. It’s a story that would let me play with it on different levels, too: It’s a metaphor, see.

The last line that really struck me was this one: “I am like a fish in a poisoned pond. Sooner or later I am bound to die, whether I stay in it or get out of it.” I don’t care about the context or the character who said it, and I’d leave all those trappings behind. But it seems like the perfect wrapper for some kind of noir-flavored story (read: my favorite), a character with nowhere left to turn and only bad options to choose from. Maybe some kind of crime story with family drama and connections tied into it; not sure yet.

Bibliography: The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic by R. K. Narayan.

Image Credit: "Dark Alley" by Tom Francis. Source: Flickr.

Reading Notes: Narayan's Ramayana, Section A

The first thing in the notes to catch my interest was something that a poet told Rama: “Owing to the potency of your name, I became a sage, able to view the past, present, and future as one.” That’s an interesting brand of clairvoyance—seeing all the times at once, jumbled together, something you have to untangle to make sense of—rather than the usual “glimpses of the future interrupting the present” thing. It would also be a lot harder to live with, which means it has nice potential for a character complication.

I also find the situation that Ravana’s engineered pretty interesting. He and his brothers, “through austerity and prayers,” were granted “extraordinary powers” from the gods. But then the brothers turned right back around “and now threaten to destroy our worlds and enslave” the gods. Because the gods granted the powers, they can’t take them back again or do much to combat them. It’s even more interesting if you view the entire situation as one long con carried out by Ravana and his brothers, which I’m inclined to do.

Early on, the story also mentions that Rama and his brothers were born to the childless king only after the king performed a complex sacrifice—and I love the idea. Instead of being a miracle baby or being brought about by lots or prayer or good karma or whatever, imagine knowing you owe your entire existence to some dark and costly sacrifice. I’d be really interested in seeing the boys born out of that, blood and blades instead of love and hope.

I was also struck by the description of the desert wasteland Rama and the others come across—the cursed land: “Bleached bones lay where animals had perished, including those of monstrous serpents with jaws open in deadly thirst; into these enormous jaws had rushed...elephants desperately seeking shade, all dead and fossilized, the serpent and elephant alike.” It’s a setting with plenty of potential, and it would give me the freedom to tell a whole range of stories this week, which I find appealing.

Then there’s the fate of the mother and her two sons who went around destroying everything after her equally destructive husband was killed: He met their challenge by cursing them. “Since you are destroyers of life, may you become asuras and dwell in the nether worlds.” (Till now they had been demigods. Now they were degraded to demonhood.) The three at once underwent a transformation; their features and stature became forbidding, and their natures changed to match. The sons left to seek the company of superdemons. I don’t actually know if a story inspired by that would fit the weekly format, so I may have to save it as inspiration for something else, but that’s so up my alley.

At another point, when Sita’s miserable and a singing bird irritates the heck out of her, she exclaims, “The sins I committed in a previous birth have assumed your form and come to torture me now!” I’m interested in taking that idea and making it quite literal, just swapping out the bird for another person.

Throughout the king and Kaikeyi’s exchange, I also kind of loved their dynamic: he was so dramatic about everything, while she was cool and collected. I think it could be really fun to give that to another pair, either a couple who’s been together forever or just work partners, with a drama queen for the guy and a matter-of-fact ice queen for the girl.

Finally, I was also interested when Kaikeyi explained the situation with the king’s old vows to Rama, and said: “It is your duty to help your father fulfill his promise. Otherwise he will be damning himself in this and other worlds. You owe him a duty as his son.” And Rama just accepted it, realized he needed to do this for his father’s sake, and went on. I’d probably use that as the basis for a story about a son or daughter carrying out something unpleasant for the dad’s sake, since the same bones are all there.





Bibliography: The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic by R. K. Narayan.

Image Credit: "Ravana" by Sachin Nagar. Source: Indian Epics: Reading Guides.