I ask for directions

I guess I don’t follow the norm when it comes to reading directions. While I definitely understand why “very few people take the time to read instructions”[1]—they can be boring, condescending, and daunting in length—I have always preferred, even insisted upon, directions.

READING INSTRUCTIONS ISN'T JUST FOR DUMMIES. I HAVE A HARD TIME DOING AN ASSIGNMENT WHEN THERE ARE FEW DIRECTIONS. 

 I have been this way ever since I was a little kid. One of my mom’s favorite embarrassing story about me (which she tells at any opportunity) concerns my first homework assignment in first grade. The teacher told us to put a circle around the nouns in a sentence and put a square around the verbs; however, when I got home I couldn’t remember which shapes I was supposed to use. Triangles? Rectangles? Circles? Octagons? It was geometrical hell. My mom tried to communicate to me that it wasn’t the shapes that were important, but the fact that I could distinguish between nouns and verbs. Despite her words of wisdom, I proceeded to have myself a slight panic attack that ended with tears running down my face and blank sentences.

            Fast forward twelve years and I am still very much the same in regards to directions, minus the whole freaking out and crying bit. I want to know what it is that I need to do in order for my work to be a success, and I don’t mind being dictated to in order to achieve this. Following directions has always given me a sense of accomplishment and comfort; as long as I do what they say, my project will not suffer. I am often held hostage by written commands, yet the situation almost always ends peacefully. 

WITHOUT CLEAR INSTRUCTIONS, I OFTEN FEEL CONSTRAINED. I WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT WHAT IS EXPECTED THAT I HARDLY GET ANYTHING DONE. 

However, there are times when the directions go all double agent on me, and that is when the expletives start to fly.

As much as I love and feel the need for directions, I simply can’t stand it when they are unclear, vague, or just flat out incorrect. 

CLOUDY INSTRUCTIONS OFTEN LEAD ME TO BEING LOST AND CONFUSED.

high school teachers would occasionally get pretty annoyed with me and my detailed questions (i.e. “even though the instructions say five pages, is it alright if I go a little over?”). I knew that sometimes what I was asking about was irrelevant, but if I didn’t ask, I wouldn’t be able to work on a project in piece. My main problem with the portfolio instructions was how open ended they were, for they essentially said “copy and paste the code from a website and then write in what you want.” I might as well have been trying to build a spaceship. I wouldn’t have even known what I wanted to put in the code if I had known how to write it. This of course led me to spending a few hours in Dr. Bump’s office with a very “show me how to do this” attitude. I was at the point where I “seemed to prefer someone showing [me] what to do, an instant fix.”[2] My main motivation for going to get help wasn’t to get an “instant fix” though, but to avoid going home only to find out that something doesn’t work.

Even though I spent quite a bit of time in Dr. Bump’s office, I eventually gave up on his method and decided to use iWeb instead (a program that I didn’t initially use because of the fact that there were no instructions provided for it). The directions were simply too vague, or perhaps too advanced, for me to efficiently use them. iWeb conveniently turned out to be very user friendly. I was “able to get it—what it is and how to use it—without expending any effor thinking about it.”[3] Once I began using iWeb, the project took about two hours, about 1/3 of the time I had dedicated to simply figure out the instructions given to us.

I HAVE FOUND THAT MAC PRODUCTS SIMPLIFY COMPLEX PROJECTS, WHICH PUTS A BIG SMILE ON MY FACE. 

[1] Krug, 2006, p. 26

[2] Bump

[3] Krug, 2006, p. 11