This weekend gave us just a taste of what six weeks up North will hold. There were many instances where we found ourselves lost and at the mercy of whoever was guiding us. In the midst of the mind/body experience that was square dancing, a few points came to mind that illuminated the cycle of learning and adapting to new environments. So here is my first draft of the learning cycle. We’ll see if it changes at all over the next few months....
Stages of Learning*
1. Confusion
This was most evident at the Saturday night dance. Square dancing is kind of premised on the assumption that participants know how to go about interacting with each other and the music. In our case, neither prerequisite was met. This led to a lot of bewildered looks, wandering feet, and getting laughed at (which really goes hand in hand with this first stage).
2. Knowledge Acquisition
Three or four community members who really knew what to do were given the de facto task of teaching us and the younger members of the community the steps.
3. Vague Understanding
By this stage, we kind of grasped the basic idea of what we were supposed to be doing, and made it about 30 seconds without seriously undermining the dance. Self confidence grew by about 15%.
4. Crisis
And then everything changed. People started moving in different directions, and we lost all sense of who was supposed to go where. This inevitably sent us back to Stage 1 of the cycle.
* Note: You never get to anything more than a vague understanding. Thinking you have is really just a unique feature of Stage 3. Wait two seconds to find out how little you actually know.
