#MyMemory #25(26?) 卒L.M.
Hello, I am L.M. from intercultural communication course. I am going to study at Bryn Mawr College 🇺🇲✈️🎒 as an exchange student from September. In this essay, I will share my experiences and memories from the English department welcome day at the end of April.
(PS 今更感がとんでもないですけど、自分にとって学びの多い時間でしたのでこのNOTEを書きました（笑）)
The Preparation for Welcome Day
Running an organized event like the welcome day requires a lot of work. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to be part of the organizing team. My task was to introduce what I learned from intercultural communication course and my seminar. My responsibilities included making a video 🎥, presenting it to the freshman girls, and answering their questions in the classroom on the day of the event. As a senior student, I approach these tasks with confidence. Until I started writing scripts for the introduction video, I realized crisis comes to visit me.
“How should I explain these basic concepts about intercultural communication course to my freshman girls?”
I struggled with this question for a week 😵💫, even though it seems to be easy. Sitting in front of my laptop, I repeatedly watched the introduction video made by last year’s student until I remind the curse of knowledge, which I learned from Communication Theory 📚(by Professor Cheng 🦖) last year.
“I Am Cursed by My Own Knowledge!”
“The curse of knowledge” is a cognitive bias where we incorrectly assume that everyone knows as much as we do on a topic. A group of economists 👨🎓🧑🎓👩🎓coined the term “curse of knowledge” in 1989. Researchers made a simple “tapping game” experiment to examine how does this bias work. Someone taps out a song without background music and identify whether listeners were able to guess the song correctly. The result was beyond what people’s imagination, only 27% of listeners could figure out the correct answer.
（Here is the video I watched on Professor Cheng's class）
As many can imagine, such cognitive bias lurks in our daily communication, both orally and in writing. I talked with Professor Cheng about the direction of our course introduction video, his words helps me make up my mind, I should do something that never told in my textbooks.
The Revenge of Ignorance
Let me start with my conclusion, I finished my script by embracing the power of “unknowing” 🔥. After completing my script, I sent it to my friends from different major, even from different universities, asking them to highlight any words they could not explain. By following their questions, I revised my script for many times until they knew everything on it. Thankfully, many friends from seminar helped me with the whole event, and I know many new people through the communication. Even though I am still “cursed” by knowledge sometimes (usually? always?), everything I learn from welcome day will keep helping me get over with obstacles, especially those relating to misunderstanding🎉🎉🎉.
2024 Welcome Day 異文化コミュニケーションコース video, please enjoy! 是非ご覧下さい!!
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