Enneagram post, revised

So, the enneagram. Let me begin with a (very) brief overview of how the system works. There are nine basic types, denoted by number. The number system is nominal, meaning they're all created equal, one type isn't better than any other, (one is not greater than three, etc.) Another thing that I didn't mention in class is that every type has a subtype or "wing" - and the wing will always be either lower or higher than your type. Since I'm a type four, I can have either a three wing or a five wing, and this wing helps to temper and further delineate me as a type four. When you take the test, it will also tell you what your wing is (I think.) Further, there are always different levels of health within every type. The healthier we are as people, the more we learn how to take virtues from all the different types to make a more well rounded person. But this is a lot of jargon for you to explore on your own, and I hope you do.

So about me. Like I said, I'm a type 4, and I have a 5 wing. 4w5 is how we present it in ennea-speak. The basic deal with type 4's is that we feel special, sensitive, moody, sectioned off from the rest of society. We are often artists, or in my case, writers. We feel like we need to create art in order to be understood, and we navigate the world chiefly through our emotions. We tend to be narcissistic at worst, and deeply compassionate for others at best. My 5 wing tends to make me more introverted and introspective than if I had a 3 wing. The 3 wing would make me more expressive and extroverted, but alas, no. The goal for any 4 in life is to learn how to get out of our heads, and to be productive in our art. 4's have a tendency to sit around fantasizing about being great artists as opposed to doing the work to actually get them there. When you sit down to analyze your own type, it's good to think about the different strengths and weaknesses that your type has to offer, and identify the ways you can improve. Some of my favorite/famous 4's include, but are not limited to: Thom Yorke of Radiohead, the recently deceased J.D. Salinger, William Shakespeare, Fiona Apple, Bob Dylan, and on and on.

Now, what do I think about all this? Obviously I'm into the enneagram, otherwise I wouldn't have assigned it. I've been studying this system since high school. First my friend David got into it, and then he converted me, and soon all of my friends at school knew what their type was. It tends to really interest some people and seriously annoy others. When I came to Montana I tried to keep the information to myself, but alas, I couldn't keep it contained, and now everyone in the MFA program knows what type they are thanks to me (and also my roommate, a 4w3. She adopted it early on and taught it to everyone else.) The reason I want all of us to learn it is that I just want to give us a collective vocabulary on how to deal with ourselves and others. Further, you may or may not find it useful to know your partner's type when it comes time to interview them for the profile piece. Knowing your own type helps you improve as a person; knowing the types of your friends and family around you will help you relate to them. We often assume that everyone thinks the same as us - the enneagram, or indeed any personality type system helps us appreciate each other's differences. I look forward to reading all about your results.

Again, I'd like these posted by Sunday at midnight. Any earlier postings would be greatly appreciated as I'm really looking forward to reading these!

similarminds.com

go here. click on the first link, enneagram personality tests > under the "ennagram tests" header, click on "advanced test" - email yourself the results page.

9types.com

Once you get your test results, you can read bulleted information about the different types here to determine if you think the test is right.

wikipedia.com

Wikipedia isn't always a great source, but for the kind of pop psychology we're dealing with here, its got decent information that I trust.

Please do further research on your own for different sources. There are also books on the subject. The big authors in Enneagram land are Helen Palmer and Don Richard Riso. Good luck, friends.

Where are we, what's happening, why are we doing this?

Hello and welcome to the great blog experiment of 2010. The purpose for gathering you all here to do this weird, weird thing is many-fold. You're probably wondering why I don't just assign you reading and writing assignments like a normal person. With all the initial set up and hassles, I'm beginning to wonder that myself :) Still. Let me list off a few reasons why I think this experiment might be fruitful for all of us.

1. Firstly, I want to mess with your heads a little bit and take you out of the normal academic setting for a moment. Something about the educational process gets us all thinking in fragmented ways about what writing is. Many of you talked about wanting to learn better "technical writing" skills or "academic writing" skills. Some of you said you were better at personal writing or "writing for fun" compared to school writing. My goal here is to teach you that there is really no difference between these seemingly disparate kinds of writing. Yes, there are conventions and nuances to different genres, but essentially, it's all a process of communication. The writing you do for your blog will be excellent practice for any other kind of writing you attempt to do, including the major papers we'll be working on in class.
2. The blog will give all of you a chance to get to know and to learn from each other. You'll get a variety of different voices, and further, you'll learn what other people think about the different topics. You might find that others in the class approach a reading we do radically different from how you did. You might even change your mind about something, and changing your mind is exhilarating.
3. The student-teacher writing relationship exists in one place and one place only: school. It's made up; it's not real. When you do "real world" writing, the audience matters. Your words will make a difference and will be designed to influence, inform, entertain, whatever. With this blog community, you will have a real world audience: each other.
4. I understand that writing for your peers is scary, intimidating, etc. Courage, man! We should relish the opportunity to overcome fears, because it can only make us stronger, better people. All of you tested into writ101, so that means you're all more or less at the same skill-level. I can promise that no one is judging you for misplaced apostrophes or weird sentences. We're all in this together, and we're all going to become better writers as a result of this process. Myself included.
5. Finally, blogs are fun. The philosophy behind blogging is that it's quick and dirty writing. The writing process isn't just about writing what you know - rather, through the writing process you come to discover what you know. It's an act of inquiry, of curiosity, of engagement with your subject. You might not understand what I'm talking about now, but I promise, you will.

Phew! I've said a lot. In fact, I never got around to the topic at hand, which, what was it I assigned? Introductions. Well, Hi, it's me, Molly, and I am the Messiah of Writ101. I love writing, reading, and persuading others to love it too. I look forward to reading everyone's first blog posts. I'll leave lots of comments, and hopefully together we can decide where this experiment will go from here. Feel free to leave any questions or comments you have about this post in the comments of this blog. I'm going to end by leaving you with this link about web literacy and some of the other topics I've introduced thus far.

Studies explore whether the Internet makes students better writers.

Namaste.

How to set up your writ 101 blog

Hello. I'm going to walk you through the basics of setting up your blog here. It's pretty simple.

1. Start by going to Blogger.com. You'll set up an account using an email address and password. You don't need to use your grizmail email. If you have a gmail address, that's ideal because it will link to all your other google stuff, but any email is fine.

2. Pick a URL and blog name. It doesn't matter what these are. The blog name can be changed easily - the URL cannot.

3. After that, you're all set. You can look around at different layouts and settings to customize your blog. We'll be linking all the blogs together in class on Wednesday.

Day 1.

Welcome, writ 101 students. We will be building a thriving Internet community very soon. I'm sure of it.