{"id":225,"date":"2014-07-25T20:09:54","date_gmt":"2014-07-25T20:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.candelalearning.com\/writershandbook\/?post_type=chapter&p=225"},"modified":"2017-01-04T22:16:32","modified_gmt":"2017-01-04T22:16:32","slug":"1-3-slowing-down-your-thinking","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-mcc-styleguide\/chapter\/1-3-slowing-down-your-thinking\/","title":{"raw":"1.3 Slowing Down Your Thinking","rendered":"1.3 Slowing Down Your Thinking"},"content":{"raw":" \r\n
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1.3<\/span> Slowing Down Your Thinking<\/h2>\r\n
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Learning Objectives<\/h3>\r\n
    \r\n \t
  1. Learn the benefits of thinking more slowly.<\/li>\r\n \t
  2. Learn the benefits of thinking of the world in smaller chunks.<\/li>\r\n \t
  3. Apply slower, more \u201csmall-bore\u201d thinking to a piece of student writing.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\nGiven the fast pace of today\u2019s multitasking world, you might wonder why anyone would want to slow down their thinking. Who has that kind of time? The truth is that college will probably present you with more of an opportunity to slow down your thinking than any other time of your adult life. Slowing down your thinking doesn\u2019t mean taking it easy or doing less thinking in the same amount of time. On the contrary, learning to think more slowly is a precondition to making a successful, meaningful contribution to any discipline. The key is to adjust your perspective toward the world around you by seeing it in much smaller chunks.\r\n\r\nWhen you get a writing assignment in a broad topic area asking for a certain number of words or pages (let\u2019s say 1,000 to 1,250 words, or 4 to 5 double-spaced pages, with 12-point font and 1-inch margins), what\u2019s your first reaction? If you\u2019re like most students, you might panic at first, wondering how you\u2019re going to produce that much writing. The irony is that if you try to approach the topic from a perspective that is too general, what you write will likely be as painful to read as it is to write, especially if it\u2019s part of a stack of similarly bland essays. It will inevitably be shallow because a thousand words on ten ideas works out to about a hundred words per idea. But if you slow down your thinking to find a single aspect of the larger topic and devote your thousand words to that single aspect, you\u2019ll be able to approach it from ten different angles, and your essay will distinguish itself from the pack.\r\n\r\nLet\u2019s try this with an excerpt of student writing on high school dropouts that was conducted at warp speed. Either the writer was eager to complete the assignment or she hurried to a conclusion without examining the elements of her topic that she was taking for granted. Every sentence or phrase that could benefit from slower thinking in smaller chunks is set in bold blue font<\/strong>.\r\n
    \"\"<\/a><\/div>\r\nThis example is not given to find fault with the student\u2019s approach, however rushed it might have been. Each of the bold blue passages<\/strong> is not technically a mistake, but rather a missed opportunity to take a deeper, more methodical approach to a complicated problem. From this one paragraph, one could imagine as many as eight<\/strong> completely researched, full-length essays emerging on the following topics.\r\n
    \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
    Missed Opportunity<\/th>\r\nPossible Essay Topic<\/th>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/thead>\r\n
    \u201cToday\u2019s world\u201d<\/td>\r\nA historical comparison with other job markets for high school dropouts<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
    \u201cMany things that may serve as an obstacle\u201d or \u201cstudents are forced for other reasons to have to drop out\u201d<\/td>\r\nA study of the leading causes of the high school dropout rate<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
    \u201cThe parents must make the decision whether the student is going to be allowed to drop out or not\u201d<\/td>\r\nA study of the dynamics of parent-teen relationships in households where the teen is at risk academically<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
    \u201cGuidance counselors should do all they can\u201d<\/td>\r\nAn analysis of current practices of allocating guidance counseling to a wide range of high school students<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
    \u201cSome students may be looked upon as a challenge\u201d<\/td>\r\nA profile of the most prominent characteristics of high school students who are at risk academically<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
    \u201cGet a job\u201d<\/td>\r\nA survey of employment opportunities for high school dropouts<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
    \u201cSome kind of alternative education\u201d<\/td>\r\nAn evaluation of the current GED (General Educational Development) system<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
    \u201cSchools should do everything they can\u201d<\/td>\r\nA survey of best practices at high schools across the country that have substantially reduced the dropout rate<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\n<\/div>\r\nThe questions you\u2019ve encountered so far in this chapter have been designed to encourage mindfulness, the habit of taking nothing for granted about the text under examination. Even (or especially) when \u201cthe text under examination\u201d happens to be your own, you can apply that same habit. The question \u201cWhat is it I am taking for granted about ____________?<\/strong>\u201d has several variants:\r\n