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Heidi Law

The useless & the useful: expectations after the final presentations

After the final presentations I have a much clearer picture of what I can expect from KM in the next 5 months.

It’s not gonna teach you jackshit

It’s true! I don’t think I will learn anything concrete. I may walk away with a very basic outline of something, maybe there will be one workshop on business plan writing, some other on sustainability (maybe); but that’s not gonna give me much more than the introductory chapter in actually learning about anything ‘useful’.

It’s all personal bs

Forget about learning something concrete. That kind of learning you do that in the library. I feel like most of the presentations are highly personal, messy, but enchanting*.

I try to recall what are the commonalities of the graduates in their presentations:

  • doubt about what they actually learned
  • feel an immense personal growth
  • more in touch with their feelings & make peace with themselves
  • acquire a sense of confidence & peace
  • have more faith in facing the great unknown, namely the future

What do I feel when I witness these presentations? I feel like I am watching life — yes, I’m watching life. Their hopes, their fears, their aspirations, their frustrations, all lie in an open plain for you to see. It would take years of friendship for someone to open up like that and talk about themselves with such honesty; and they are there doing that in front of an audience. I feel like an uninvited voyeur in this process, or I am cheating the line. I feel that I haven’t earned their trust, and I’m just so happen to be there in the room where they pour their heart out and I’m an outsider.

But I get over that bit anyway. I need to feel connected but I am not (ref. NVC).

*Interesting sideline, I noticed that all the girls just sit there and ramble on about their feelings, open, honest, unabashedly personal; while the guys put more thoughts into presentation, and how to wrap their feelings in some sort of performance.

But it may make you a better person

So do all these people just wasted half a year mucking around with their emotions? I don’t think so.

They all grow into better human beings.

So concretely (favourite buzzword of the day!), what do I expect, and what do I want to learn? I think it all falls under the umbrella of ‘people’. Yes, I am going to learn about people, what they feel and think, what are their pathways & default mechanisms, how to deal with them and steer things towards a better direction.

I want to be able to:

  • make better connections with people: be a good conversationalist, and be able to fish out what’s interesting in people (basically the party crashers’ survival tactic)
  • works in a group better
  • more patient, lose the neuroticism
  • more calm!!!!!! (irony)

The 8 different kinds of intelligence(s)

There is a video that I wish to end this blogpost with, which illustrate very well what I want to achieve with KM.

When we think about intelligent people we think about scoring high in exams, thick difficult books, universities etc.; but that represents only a very limited domain of intelligence:

  • language
  • logic/mathematical

IQ tests valorise and popularise them, and they become THE definition of intelligence. But there are a lot more other out there, which are equally important as an all-rounded human being. Intelligences that are under-recognised includes:

  • interpersonal
  • intrapersonal
  • physical
  • spatial etc.

To find out more about the 8 different intelligences, presented with a soothing, gentle, deep male voice: https://youtu.be/oY2C4YgXm7I

Those highlighted items are what I think is what KM can teach me a lot about — which are also my weakest links, and I suffer a lot from being an absolute retard in those areas. I want to focus on those and improve on my underdeveloped intelligences; I’m happy to put aside half a year of my nasty, brutish and short life not being a tax-paying cog in the capitalist machine, but to work on fluffy bs that may make me lastingly (slightly) happier.

KM from the outside can easily be seen as being dubious, intangible, undefinable, hence verging on the point of being silly. (It looks like a kindergarten you have to admit!) You’re an adult now, why don’t you go learn something useful?

But I wish to raise one point … what’s more useful than being a better person? You have got 40+ years to put that into practice, and live a fuller and more beautiful life.