On 07/02/2009 06:56 PM, Tiago Bortoletto Vaz wrote: > I don't > feel confortable answering those question which I had to do some research to > be > able to write something
Why? I happily researched all the questions during the NM process
before writing my responses, even for the questions i felt that i
already had answers to. It was an opportunity to conduct a deliberate
exploration of useful details, led by a helpful guide.
And writing the answers in my own words was useful too: i find that my
understanding after explaining an idea to a third party is always deeper
than after just reading someone else's framing of the idea. Writing
real answers to the questions encouraged me to go down that path. And
if i didn't understand one of the questions and i got stumped
researching it, i didn't feel it was wrong to ask for help or a pointer
for further reading.
So I don't think the question and answer part of the NM process is (or
should be) a pop quiz. If we're going to frame it academically, I see
it as more of a study guide and a series of reports to an intelligent
advisor.
The back-and-forth of the questions also establishes a baseline for
understanding how a person acts and interacts over sustained e-mail
contact, which is crucial to their future as a DD.
It would be a shame if this nuanced, human-oriented, skill-building
process were made into a checklist, a multiple-choice rigamarole, or a
way of "ranking" prospective DD's somehow. Why create a system that
would encourage smart but unethical people to game it?
This is *not* to say that the process shouldn't be improved. There is a
lot of unclear waiting at various stages, which is aggravating, and the
initial introduction to the process can be fairly unfriendly. But the
actual Q&A part is not the problem, from what i've seen.
--dkg
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