By the time my son was in third grade it had become obvious that his biggest
academic challenge was his disinterest in following directions. He would
fail math tests, not for lack of understanding of the math, but because he
was solving for something other than what the question was asking him to
solve.
To cure him of this, I sat him down one Sunday afternoon, handed him a 15-
page practice test to complete, and told him he could not leave his room
until it was completed. The very first instruction on page one was to read
the entire test before beginning work on any of the problems. The very last
instruction on page 15 was: "Now that you have finished reading the entire
test, do not complete any of the problems. Hand it in and let's go out for
ice cream".
My wife and I sat downstairs laughing, waiting for the moment that finally
came three hours later, when having failed to read everything first as
instructed, an having completed all of the problems and essays, he finally
arrived at the last page and let out a pitiful scream.
Mike E.
---------- Original Message -----------
From: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 21:18:53 EDT
Subject: Re: Dartmouth
> In a message dated 9/23/2003 6:11:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
> The ability to follow instructions is an undervalued job skill. It is
> astounding how many people will insist on doing things their own way
> in spite of having received specific instructions which are based on
> many more years of experience than they have. It is obviously time
> for the fascinating story of the design portion of the Architect's
> Licensing Exam to come into play.
>
> The program for the exam tells you that you're designing for
> instance a school; the school has to have x number of classrooms, an
> auditorium, a cafeteria, boys and girls toilets (y number of toilet
> rooms with z fixtures in each), a principal's a nurse's office, a
> teacher's lounge, a certain square footage devoted to storage,
> janitor's closets, etc. etc. You have to draw a floor plan for
> each floor, an elevation, and a section noting materials, labeling
> the rooms, etc.
>
> You design your building in 12 hours and turn in your drawings. The
> first run through by the judges is to determine whether you have
> turned in all 3 drawings; those who are missing one or more drawings
> fail the exam. They then look to see which complete sets of
> drawings have the labels on all of the rooms; if you didn't put
> labels on all the rooms, you're out. They then look to see which
> sets of drawings have all the rooms they called for; if you forgot
> the gym, or the janitor's closets, or provided only 12 classrooms
> instead of the required 13, you're out, too.
>
> Once they winnow out everybody who was too stupid, or considered
him/herself
> a hotshot designer who could ignore the program, they start to
> figure out from among those who complied with THOSE requirements
> whose layouts comply and don't comply with the program, and whose
> fully comply and whose only marginally comply, those who put the
> boiler room next to the walk-in refrigerator, and so on.
>
> The primary point of the process is to see if you can follow
> directions, and then to see whether you can solve the design
> problem. If you can't do both, you get to keep taking the exam
> until you can.
>
> Therefore I have very little patience with those who can't be
> bothered to follow directions.
>
> Ralph
------- End of Original Message -------
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