Just another blog post comment
Nothing new. Nothing too challenging. I can easily recall the rules off the top of my head: be positive, be polite, … and be positive. Okay, I admit, its probably a little more detailed than that, but nothing outrageously different. For good measure, I checked the rubric.
When something is highlighted in red, you know it’s important, so I paid EXTRA ATTENTION. After thoroughly reading them, I gave myself a pep talk: Don’t be lazy and write vague comments just to get done with it. Be genuine and precisely list out all the reasons why the post is “good”. Since the goal is to not be provocative, compliments it is! They must be detailed and elaborated.
I made sure all my comments are in paragraph form. When I look at other people’s comments, I even felt pride, because no one came close to being as detailed as mine. I thought I had a pretty good chance of getting 8s.
Turns out being a self-assured hubris is never a good idea…I got an unspeakable grade.
Apparently, the third point of the Do Not in the rubric meant don’t write any compliment related content. It doesn’t mean literally the phrases “great job”, “awesome job”, and “I like your post”. Those phrases are just there because they are the most common compliment people write. I felt dumbfounded. My comment indeed didn’t include any of those cliche compliment phrases, I made sure of it. But that wasn’t what the teacher was looking for, instead my comment should NOT BE BASED ON COMPLIMENTS AT ALL.
Skloot and Deborah’s Friendship
In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebeccas Skloot, the misunderstanding had caused rapture in Skloot and Deborah’s friendship. When Skloot asked to copy Henrietta’s medical records because the original one was too crumpled and torn, Deborah became suspicious of Skloot’s motive.
“Deborah squinted at [Skloot], looking suspicious.” (Skloot, 282)
Deborah was scared that Skloot was secretly working for someone. To make matters worse, when Deborah asked Skloot to not include the word “idiocy” in her book, Skloot made the mistake and smiled.
“Not because I thought it was funny, but because… it was sweet that she was protective of her sister.” (Skloot, 283)
However, Deborah completely took her reaction in the wrong way. She thought Skloot is laughing at her sister’s sickness. When Skloot denied, Deborah only grew angrier and distrustful.
“‘You’re lying!’ Deborah yelled. (Skloot, 283)
Photo credit: Fabrice Le Coq on VisualHunt.com / CC BY
In my case, I took words as its literal meaning and received unpleasant grades. In Skloot’s case, her smile was thought of as being menacing, which got her self into a physical fight. Misunderstanding happens more often than you think.
Misunderstanding Song
This song was written by Phil Collins, about himself getting stood up and failing to understand that the girl wants nothing to do with him. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he keeps blaming her evasiveness on “some misunderstanding.”
Citation:
- Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Broadway Books, 2011. Print.
- Songfacts. “Misunderstanding by Genesis.” Songfacts, www.songfacts.com/facts/genesis/misunderstanding.
- Genesis. “Genesis – Misunderstanding (Official Music Video).” YouTube, YouTube, 18 Sept. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_L-S-0Gc4I.
Hi Michelle~
For your first paragraph “just another blog post comment” I feel a strong connection to this paragraph. For my last summative on commenting also get an unspeakable grade. As I also think of giving the comment was like giving comment on what was her/him write in the post “without” my own value but in fact, adding my own connection can make the people write the post know more about how people feel when they reading this post and the real though on this post. Every time I check on the rubric I always think I did fit and done everything I should do but the grade come out a result that “no you didn’t look carefully on the rubric”, and it sometimes makes me feel doubt before I turn in and I will start to “check” again and again or just doing that homework slowly and carefully. For the second part that you discuss the misunderstanding in the book, I think part of this happened was because on untrust, as every people that Deborah meet were people who “only” want to know more information on her mother Henrietta and HeLa cell, there’s no one like really care about what was their life now; everyone find them to get their own benefit, no matter for medical, science or money. So I think to have misunderstood or cause it, it makes because of much reasons behind it. Your post was very interesting and it did connect on many points to myself, look forward to reading more about your future post.
Dora Huang
Hi Michelle!
I think that your introduction about looking out for things not to do is interesting and something that I never thought of, but I somewhat find it hard to see the connection it has with misunderstandings. Is it that not reading the rubric correctly led to a misunderstanding in the assignment?
I think that your analysis between Skloot and Deborah was very good, the evidence that you used for strong for the points that you were making, and it wasn’t a long strip of text as well. However, I do think that the actual analysis of the quotes could have gone into more detail.
Hi Michelle,
I was so surprised when you mentioned the whole blog post comment incident because that was exactly what happened to me too. Your argument popped out to me as I never considered this a form of miscommunication. It really widened my perspective about the scope of miscommunication and how common it actually is in our daily lives. On the other hand, misunderstanding is indeed a prominent and recurring theme in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The lack of trust Deborah gives to Rebecca Skloot on certain occasions revolving around the medical records of her mom, and the misunderstanding that eventually arises between the two can be attributed to the deception and lying Deborah had encountered constantly during her life from the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the various reporters who were only interested in her mother’s cells. The lack of consent the hospital gives when taking her mother’s and her own cells, and the manipulation of the truth surrounding HeLa cells from news reports made Deborah lose faith in the society and the scientific community, eventually making her the sensitive and sometimes overreactive person we see in the book. Despite miscommunication and misunderstanding often times being perceived as negative things and things to be avoided, what are some of the possible benefits that can arise from miscommunication? For example, in Deborah and Skloot’s case, I personally think that it is these misunderstanding that happened often between them, and the time they invested into each other to solve these conflicts that made their friendship so precious and strong. Would you agree to me on that?
Nice post! – Curie