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The Useless Meeting Wack Jobs
$$$$$exyGal writes "Have you ever attended a useless meeting? Are you the wack job who always ask the same (or random) question during an all hands with the hope that simply by asking, you're going to change something? Rands in Repose points out the difference between an informational meeting and a conflict resolution meeting."
There's nothing wrong with that, unless you want to get promoted into management. Then I think your performance will be evaluated on the number of useless meetings you go to (and run).
I get invited to a ton of meetings every week, but always ask the person calling it if I really need to go. More than half the time, I was only invited because I was on the project distribution list!
... and why not learn a little more about communication in general ?
Theme Centered Interaction (Ruth C. Cohn) immediately comes to mind, and the article also links to CSCW.
CC.
Full House! Man, I love Buzzword Bingo... and that article pretty much filled my card up.
It's not an "article." Journalists write articles. This "Rand" thing was some guy's "blog," which really should have been flagged as such by the presenter, thereby saving many of us a lot of time.
It's not an "article." Journalists write articles.
Let's look at the words, shall we?
Article: 1) Nonfictional prose forming an independent part of a publication
Journalist: 1) one who writes for a newspaper or magazine 2) Someone who keeps a diary or journal.
Welcome back to the new old journalism. When journalism began, it was much like definition 2. Some guy would write a treatise or his opinions of the world or society, and publish it for all to read. Years later this evolved into the traditional mass media, but the editoral page, or editoral minute from video news, remained. It is not enough to just present facts, readers want commentary too.
Generally traditional mass media publications are fact checked better, they check spelling and grammar better, and usually are more sucessful at hiding their [coporate] bias. If you're looking for facts only, taken with a grain of salt, traditional publications are the place to be.
In the last few years we've seen a resurgance of the original form of journalism. No longer is the independent journalist limited by what he can afford to publish or what the company's image will allow him to say. This is usually a rough style, whose facts shouldn't be taken at face value, but some would call it a more pure form of journalism.
If this resurgance of the old style wasn't considered valid journalism, Slashdot would be a lot less popular.
That said, there are side effects that *can* be treated by prescription. My daughter is something of a perfectionist, to the extent that she draws letters rather than simply writing, and she's constantly erasing and redrawing. This generally puts her behind with her schoolwork, which makes her anxious and then depressed. Since she started on Paxil, she's been much more stable, easier to "talk down" when she's uptight about something, and has been able to move from mostly Special Ed classes to mainstream.
One other less commonly recognized symptom is difficulty recognizing faces. People may have a hard time telling if the person you are speaking to now is the same person as before (for example an employee in a supermarket). And TV is even harder. People close to you usually give more clues (voice, clothing, etc), and are not as hard. And forget about mug shots, or those lost kids pictures.
There is a specialized area in the brain for recognizing human faces, different from the one for recognizing objects. (So damage in the area for recognizing objects will not prevent someone from recognizing faces, and vise versa.) Aspergers clearly involves that area.
The goal is to learn to use the object recognition area on faces, specifically on body language. Which is possible, just learn the pictures as objects, meaning lots and lots of examples are needed, an example for every possible emotion, and type of face. (The number of variations you will need depends on how bad the aspergers is.)
As far as the perfectionisim goes, try to re-channel it. Get her to be perfect in something else about the paper rather then the shape of the letters. For example be perfectly on time, but not perfectly formed, or perhaps perfectly spelled. The perfectionisim is inate (it causes a great deal of satisfaction) but the specific thing to be perfect about is not. So you can pick something else - but something hard, or it won't count.
Saying things like - look you made a spelling mistake - all the words need to be spelled correctly, will start the process, then you need to actively not care about the shape of the letters. But be careful not to say "it's good enough", it need to be fine as it is, not fine despite how it is.
But be careful, so you don't wind up with both. How old is she BTW?
-Ariel
I was originally diagnosed with ADHD when I was five, and prescribed Ritalin by a doctor who'd been taken in by the hype at the time. They had be up to 20 mg three time a day before they realised it didn't do a damn thing for me.
;)
When I was in 5th grade, I became suicidal, and ended up inpatient at a mental health clinic. They stripped me of medications and observed me. I was finally put on Risperdal(2 mg twice per day), Welbutrin and Clonodine. Within a year they'd switched me to Risperdal, Luvox and Welbutrin. Later, in high school, I was diagnosed with Aspergers, and I was switched to Welbutrin SR. (300 mg twice per day.)
I was delayed a year before entering primary school, since I was antisocial. I was in "Developmental Kindergarten", which other kids called "Dumb Kids." (They since renamed it to "Young Fives")
In primary school, I actively avoided making friends. (Hey, it was fun being miserable. All the people with authority felt sorry for you.)
In middle school, once I was on the Risperdal, I started becoming social. I made my first few friends. (People say middle school is hell for a lot of kids. It didn't seem any worse than elementary school, where I was trampled in a game one kid called "Smear the Queer")
In high school, I became good friends with most of my teachers. My freshman year wasn't any more painful than middle school was. In my sophomore year and later, other students respected me for my skills and abilities. I played a lead role in a play my senior year.
In college, I work as a student tutor. I like to think that all of my coworkers like me. I know I'm one of the most reliable of the tutors on staff, even if I am a bit vain in other circles.
So there's my psychological medical history. Decide for yourself.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I like your military reference. To add:
Straight from the U.S. Army leadership handbook, FM 22-100:
Keep Your Soldiers Informed
Knowing 'why' you're taking this hill instead of that hill will put a stop a lot of dumb questions and increase trust in both directions. Sometimes there's no time to inform everybody. But if you've generally done a good job of rumor-control your employees will give you the benefit of the doubt when you can't.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
She skipped most of 4th grade by refusing to attend school (and no, we couldn't have dragged her there without chaining her to a desk) but she still went into 5th grade with straight A's. Some semi-official home tutoring helped there.
She's done the thing with flash cards and is now reasonably proficient at mood recognition, though she still occasionally says something insulting and can't see why it hurts - after all, she just telling it like it is... As for channelling the perfectionism - she just made 7th grade Spelling Bee champion because her spelling is nigh-on perfect... She's also not averse to injecting some humor into her homework. Last night she was looking up and typing definitions for words, one of which was "irony", and she wondered why I started laughing. I told her to Google for "Blackadder" and "irony" - she found "irony - like goldy and bronzy, only made of iron", so that's what she used. She also added, at my suggeston, "It's ironic that dictionary.com has almost this exact definition."
Nope. That manager is long gone...but for a completely different reason. The guy had a temper problem. Eventually he blew his stack one too many times and was dismissed. It's long enough ago that I can't remember precisely what set him off, but the end result was him going bat shit crazy on one of the vending machines in the break room.
They changed the locks when they let him go.