Explaining Ourselves into Making Things We Don’t Like

Any­one who has talked to me in the past few months has been sub­jected to my moan­ing com­plaints about the Par­sons the­sis process.  Lis­ten­ing this morn­ing to the Radio Lab episode on Choice, I burst into laugh­ter at Mal­com Glad­well’s anec­dote on how explain­ing your­self invari­ably results in choos­ing unso­phis­ti­cated things.  I have repeat­edly run myself into philo­soph­i­cal and aes­thetic dead ends in the­sis for over explain­ing myself, an act which repeated pre­sen­ta­tion of work to piers and teach­ers dur­ing the five hours of class time each week actively encour­ages.  Yes, five hours of class time a week for the­sis.  I deeply regret being so judi­cious about attend­ing class and tak­ing my rig­or­ously log­i­cal and insight­ful pro­fes­sor all too seri­ously.  Even more so, I regret being out­spo­ken myself and mak­ing class time more chal­leng­ing for my piers.

In Gladwell’s exam­ple on Radio Lab, he ref­er­ences an exper­i­ment by psy­chol­o­gists Tim Wil­son and Jonathan Schooler where stu­dents are offered free posters.  They can choose between a cute kit­ten image or an impres­sion­ist paint­ing.  The group that had to explain their choice over­whelm­ingly chose the kit­ten posters, largely hat­ing the posters six months later accord­ing to fol­low up phone calls.  The group that did not need to explain them­selves over­whelm­ingly chose the impres­sion­ist posters and con­tin­ued to enjoy them.

Amid the clamor over what the­sis should do for us Par­sons stu­dents, be that land us a job, get us pub­lic recog­ni­tion, serve as cen­ter­piece in out port­fo­lios, and so forth, I find that as the process wears on, what I most deeply want is to like what I make.  Isn’t that a tall enough order, to live up to my own standards?

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Adden­dum: As I read up on the Studs Terkel memo­r­ial I missed yes­ter­day, I am com­pelled to add the caveat here that I find much of Gladwell’s work charm­ingly reduc­tive.  He is a phe­nom­e­nal sto­ry­teller, my own rel­ish in relat­ing to his anec­dote a clear sign of this.  Studs Terkel, though, turns us all into good storytellers.