Generating Content for Your Resume (and Cover Letter)
Homework
Generating Content for a Professional Resume
Strategy: The Brain Dump. List all of the things you can do. Think of when/where you’ve done them. Let’s think about the coding sheet we used for the last project, and let’s pick out 4-6 skills that you think are your strong suit. List them. Brain Dump.
A few resources on translating academic work and teaching into professional job materials:
Wright & Dol. See article attachment; see sample resume description [could this go in a resume or a cover letter? Top of the resume for a person? Or bottom of a resume? Where to position this?]. See Wonderlic.
As we discussed last week (and I imagine we will discuss further tonight), a big challenge with resumes concerns constructing a document that can beat a machine and at the same time engage a human. It is a balancing act.
At least that is one hurdle with which we don’t need to deal with cover letters. The challenge of the cover letter is to convey, in a few short paragraphs, the value (explicitly?) and energy (implicitly?) you will add to an organization. In addition to being a high stakes writing sample, it is also an elevator pitch, an introduction, a first date, a sales proposal, an intellectual and professional biography. A lot has to happen quickly.
I’ll offer the following outline for cover letters:
First paragraph. First sentence: position for which you are applying. “Thesis statement” as to why you are a good fit and/or interested in the position [pay attention to the specifics in your add, look for tests/prompts/possibilities].
Second paragraph. Storytime. Chances are your thesis involves something you can do. Tell a story about the time you did the thing. Are you applying for a marketing job? Tell a story about how you developed content for a social media channel. Applying for a grant writing position? Tell a story about the time your under/graduate class partnered with a local non-profit and you researched/developed stuff and/or liaised with folks to do things. Ideally, your story should have a what I did–what effect that had narrative structure, but it doesn’t have to. The point here is to take one thing you discuss in the resume, the best thing, and turn it into a paragraph of meaningful prose.
Third paragraph. Do you have a second awesome story? Cool. Tell that too! If not, then think about how you can translate your academic success and abilities into language that shows you are a strong fit for the position. If the ad stresses personality, then can you use something like the psychometric test to sell yourself? Is there something that the ad indicates as a requirement that you can indicate you are familiar with (or something similar, that given your familiarity with Adobe Photoshop and Premiere, you are confident that you will be able to learn InDesign quickly and/or given your interest in expanding into digital marketing, you are currently enrolled in a HubSpot social media marketing certification course?)
Concluding paragraph. Open with a reiteration of your interest in the position. Close with the standard stuff–you look forward to an interview to further discuss your qualifications / the position (is it about them? Or about you?)
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One reason I like analyzing job ads is that I think it helps you internalize some of the expectations and desires employers have. Over the years, I’ve gotten to the point where I can read an ad and identify cases where I can see that they don’t necessarily know exactly what they want–but I can think of another ad that probably speaks to their needs and desires. You probably won’t develop that sense just looking at 25 ads, but I do hope our first project made you a bit more comfortable analyzing an ad.
When I teach resumes at the undergraduate level, I emphasize the importance of an rhetorical approach. Rhetoric here means two things to me:
First, it means that I attempt to read what the other person wants, thinks, values, and prioritizes
Second, it means that I approach the situation without an expectation of control or mastery, that I understand that the situation calls for a calculation of risk
I contrast this rhetorical approach to the more “philosophical” approach that tends to drive the advice one would get from career services or from many resume books and websites. Philosophical approaches try to teach hard and fast rules for developing materials. Do this! Don’t do that! They are often more concerned with their own preferences; and thus overwrite the wide chaos one finds in ads with a more simple and controlled framework. They also tend to be more conservative when it comes to voice, tone, and content. I am skeptical of this kind of “cookie cutter” approach.
Rather, I think you should approach your job materials less in terms of a baking recipe and more in terms of a high stakes poker game. When you play poker, the cards you hold are important. But equally important is your ability to read your opponents, and to make sure that you adjust your play based on theirs. You cannot plan out a poker strategy before you play the game–you can have ideas, certainly–but those ideas have to be re-calibrated once the game starts and you begin familiarizing yourself with the players.
In terms of a job search and the construction your materials, it is useful to have drafted in advance material for a resume and a cover letter. But the resume and cover letter you send to a potential employer should always be transformed based on the position for which you apply. And these transformations shouldn’t be merely cosmetic–you should create content that you think speaks to that particular organizations needs.I’ve been on the job market twice in the past 15 years, and both times I started with a default letter and CV. This doesn’t mean I recommend writing a completely different letter for every job. I don’t, no one has time for that. [job letters-unc (teaching new media and tech writing), msu (digital rhetoric research), tamu (classical)]. But I do recommend spending time reading an ad carefully, thinking about how you arrange material, and making sure that the language you use in a letter matches up with the language you find not only on an ad, but also on an organization’s website (mission statement, about us, projects). Your resume and cover letter should show organizations how you can use research and rhetoric to craft more compelling prose.
Rhetoric is the art of adapting a message to a particular audience, of recognizing the affordances and advantages of a particular situation. It always involves elements of risk and chance. I believe job searches are particularly arbitrary–there is no system or pattern to what employers look for because every employer, every human resource director, is different, and brings to the process her own preferences, methods, and attitudes. The best we can do is to learn to analyze, listen, and think through possibilities–to be aware of the potential choices we have and to make precise calculations for every position to which we apply. While we can’t be certain, we can do our best to know our audience(s), and to tailor ourselves to their preferences.
Some Practical Advice that May Even Be Useful, in Some Situations, Some of the Time
So let’s assume that we’ve beaten the machine. Now our resume is in the hands (or more likely on the screen) of a human resource director or a manager who needs to wean a stack of 20-25 candidates down to a stack of 5 for interviews. Now we might have to beat the dreaded six second scan.. But beware keyword stuffing!
Let’s close this section with a review of some generic but staple resume advice–a few Squawkfox articles.
Wright, Dol, and Collins (2011). See sample resume description [could this go in a resume or a cover letter? Top of the resume for a person? Or bottom of a resume? Where to position this?]. See Wonderlic.
Hi all. As you finish up your Community Engagement Projects, I have two small things for you to do. They are inter-related, so copying your answers for the first should help you complete the second.
First, complete the Project Reflection form [Note: this isn’t just a gotcha assignment; project postmortems are very common in the professional world, where you have a meeting after a major project’s completion to talk about process]
For the Deliverable #2 in Canvas, I’d like each team to submit a memo. The memo should list all team members, link to all team deliverables (anything from Deliverable #1 and anything finished since then). It should have some language that I can potentially copy/paste into my memo for clients regarding the project and the deliverables. Finally, it should have some instructions for how either a) an intern or b) another group next semester should approach/improve/extend/utilize your work. Again, you only need submit one of these per team. Again, a few of the questions in the reflection form should help generate this content.
Homework For Next Thursday
For next week’s class, I would like you to identify a job or internship for which you want to develop materials. Next week we will spend 20 minutes analyzing your ad and then 15 minutes generating content for a resume (I have a few heuristics to help with this process).
I will reserve the final 40 minutes of class next week for you to meet with your group and finalize your Deliverable #2.
One reason I like analyzing job ads is that I think it helps you internalize some of the expectations and desires employers have. Over the years, I’ve gotten to the point where I can read an ad and identify cases where I can see that they don’t necessarily know exactly what they want–but I can think of another ad that probably speaks to their needs and desires. You probably won’t develop that sense just looking at X amount of ads, but this awareness should make you more familiar, and thus hopefully more confident, as you start developing your own materials.
When I teach resumes at the undergraduate level, I emphasize the importance of an rhetorical approach. I contrast this rhetorical approach to the more “philosophical” approach that tends to drive the advice one would get from career services or from many resume books and websites. Philosophical approaches try to teach hard and fast rules for developing materials. They tend to be more conservative when it comes to voice, tone, and content. I am skeptical of this kind of cookie cutter approach.
Rather, I think you want to approach your job materials less in terms of a baking recipe and more in terms of a high stakes poker game. When you play poker, the cards you hold are important. But equally important is your ability to read your opponents, and to make sure that you adjust your play based on theirs. You cannot plan out a poker strategy before you play the game–you can have ideas, certainly–but those ideas have to be re-calibrated once the game starts.
In terms of a job search and the construction your materials, it is useful to have drafted in advance material for a resume and a cover letter. But the resume and cover letter you send to a potential employer should always be transformed based on the position for which you apply. And these transformations shouldn’t be merely cosmetic–you should create content that you think speaks to that particular organizations needs. [Look at my job search letters]. This doesn’t mean I recommend writing a completely different letter for every job. I don’t, no one has time for that. But I do recommend spending time reading an ad carefully, thinking about how you arrange material, and making sure that the language you use in a letter matches up with the language you find not only on an ad, but also on an organization’s website (mission statement, about us, projects). Your resume and cover letter should show organizations how you can use research and rhetoric to craft more compelling prose. [job letters-unc (teaching), msu (new media), tamu (classical)].
Rhetoric is the art of adapting a message to a particular audience, of recognizing the affordances and advantages of a particular situation. It always involves elements of risk and chance. I believe job searches are particularly arbitrary–there is no system or pattern to what employers look for because every employer, every human resource director, is different, and brings to the process her own preferences, methods, and attitudes. The best we can do is to learn to analyze, listen, and think through possibilities–to be aware of the potential choices we have and to make precise calculations for every position to which we apply. While we can’t be certain, we can do our best to know our audience(s).
Some Practical Advice that May Even Be Useful, in Some Situations, Some of the Time
So let’s assume that we’ve beaten the machine. Now our resume is in the hands (or more likely on the screen) of a human resource director or a manager who needs to wean a stack of 20-25 candidates down to a stack of 5 for interviews. Now we might have to beat the dreaded six second scan.. But beware keyword stuffing!
Let’s close this section with a review of some generic but staple resume advice–a few Squawkfox articles.
Homework
For next week, I’d like everyone to code and review the codes for 25 job ads from our corpus.
Coding in Google Docs is fairly simple–you only need to insert a comment to add a new code, or leave a comment to query (challenge) and existing one. I have added an assignment in Canvas that asks you to identify at least three comments you left on ads (these can be shorthand and we will review in class next week).
Additionally, I would like everyone to identify a position (job application or internship) for which they would like to at least theoretically apply. Your position can come from Linkedin, Monster, Media Bistro, Handshake (UNC’s job/internship application portal), anywhere. I’ve set up a portal in Canvas to turn in your Potential Job Target.
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I should start this year’s installment noting that I was horribly wrong about last season. So was every major projection system, most notably ZIPs, which had the Sox going 79-83. Not to be outdone, and anticipating a mid-season fire sale, I predicted one less win. Of course, the Sox dramatically over-performed and finished the season at 92-70, fantastically beating the Yankees in the postseason. Nice!
I’d point out, though, that the Sox went 50-31 in April, May, and June, as a bunch of veteran pitchers gave them much more than pretty much anyone thought possible. Garrett Richards, Martin Perez, and Nick Pivetta (more on him below) were all playing way over their career lines. Be it due to sticky stuff or good old regression, that ended, and the Sox went 42-39 the rest of the way. Less nice!
We enter the season after what I would call an underwhelming off-season. Yes, we got Trevor Story. I am trying to repress my questions about his road splits in Colorado (they are bad, real bad, as in a .750 OPS outside of Coors Field bad). His defense should be great at second base; he gives the Sox some insurance in case they are unable to resign Bogaerts this summer/next winter. But they lost Eduardo Rodriguez, their second best starter last season, and replaced him with the always injured James Paxton (who missed all of last year and won’t be ready to start the season) and Rich Hill (who really replaces Martin Perez-Hill is 43, also injury prone, and will attempt to push the boundaries of the “crafty lefty” archetype to its limits this year). And they lost Hunter Renfroe, who was probably better than you remember. They did not replace him (and, no, JBJ is not a replacement for Renfroe).
Vegas’ over/under for the Sox’s win total is 85.5. There’s part of me that looks at the rotation and wants to take the under, since so many things have to go right (especially given the strength of the division). However, I’ll take the over, but only slightly–let’s say 87 wins. That presumes that Sale gets healthy and gives you 25+ starts. That presumes Eovaldi stays healthy and gives you something close to last year’s Cy Young caliber season. And it presumes that they somehow find another quality starter along the way.
Pitching
Let’s start with what might be the biggest question mark–the rotation. First, the good news–Eovaldi is coming off a career best season, and the underlying numbers suggest there’s no reason he cannot repeat it. He’s a free agent at the end of the season, and speculation is that he likely won’t be coming back to the Sox (as I conclude below, they want to resign both Bogaerts and Devers, and that is going to take a mountain of money). In other words, Eovaldi has a lot of incentive to pitch his ass off again this year before he hits free agency.
Okay, that’s the good news. So, I’ve already indicated that I don’t think much of Paxton and Hill. Or at least, I’d rather have Rodriguez than both of those guys. Chris Sale starts the season on the injured list. Again. At least with Sale, we can point to his velocity numbers from last year and see that he was pretty close to his numbers from before his surgery. So at least there’s hope.
I have far less hope in Pivetta’s ability to repeat–let alone improve upon–last season. Also, Pivetta’s 2021 season probably wasn’t as good as you remember it. While he was electric in April, he was, well, bad for the rest of the year. Rarely do I point at ERA as reliable evidence, but in this case all the underlying numbers pretty much support it–so I offer his ERA by month as a shorthand for Pivetta’s 2021 season: 2.81, 4.82, 5.40, 4.84. 5.27, 3.60. Yes, he was good in September–but his walk, strikeout, and home run numbers tell us he just isn’t much more than an adequate #5 starter. He’ll start the season #2 in the rotation. Yikes.
Behind him, at #3, is Tanner Houck. I love Houck as a reliever, but am (honestly) uncertain about him in the rotation. Last season, the Sox did not let him go more than two times through the order (the two times he did turn it around a third time he got absolutely shelled for a 27.00 ERA, 8 outs against 8 runs allowed). One might argue that this is because he was bouncing between the rotation and the bullpen and thus they were limiting his workload, but I don’t buy it. Why? Because, even when starting, he was essentially a two-pitch pitcher. Technically he has 4 pitches, a four-seam fastball, a two-seam fastball, a slider, and a splitter. But he threw his splitter only 7% of the time last year, and it stunk (a -.68wFC on fangraphs–and, for those of you who don’t speak stat nerd, just trust me–that is terrible). He threw the two-seam a bit more often, 17% of the time, and while not terrible, it wasn’t good either. Combined with his four-seam fastball (which he threw 39% of the time), it scored as 0.85 wFC. So that 15% below league average effectiveness. Which leaves his slider, which he threw 37% of the time, and has a 1.73 career wFC. In other words, Houck is amazing when he comes in from the bullpen and uses his mediocre fastballs to set up his great slider. I’m just not convinced he can get through the order a third time with that trick. His ERA shows a dramatic jump the second time through (1.50 to 3.81), but his FIP and xFIP do not (2.04/2.66 vs. 2.09/2.95 respectively). So the Sox are banking on the advanced metrics here. This is something I’ll be tracking closely early in the season.
All in all, I’m not sold on this rotation. The bullpen seems okay? I love Whitlock, and it looks like he will thankfully stay in the pen for now. We have to hope that Barnes looks like the All-Star version of himself from the first half of last season (2.61 ERA) and not the cooked dude who finished the year (6.48!!! ERA). They’ve got another handful of guys that don’t excite me (this is not the Rays pen), but should be decent. The bullpen immediately improves if they can move Houck out of the rotation. It also improves tremendously if minor leaguer Jay Groome, who returned from injury and pitched well in A+ and AA last year, gets called up.
Position Players
The strength of the team is obviously the offense. Even with some of the questions I have below, they will feature Bogaerts and Devers, and both should be spectacular. Devers is now probably one of the top 25 best hitters in the game (he ranked 27th in wRC+ [which counts baserunning] and 20th in wOBA [which doesn’t] last season). Bogaerts is just an incredibly consistent hitter who balances discipline, contact, power, and baserunning. Those guys are surrounded by quality hitters in Martinez, Verdugo, Hernandez, and Story (I’m guessing Story is about an .800 OPS guy this year). That is a truly impressive top of the order, with a nice righty/lefty balance.
And then there’s Bobby “WTF is up with those splits” Dalbec. Woo boy. Let’s look at Dalbec’s first half vs. second half slash lines:
First half: .219/.264 /.409
Second half: .269/.344/.611
If you are like me, then you might look at that second half improvement and assume it was just luck. Like some BABIP nonsense. Nope. His BABIP spiked a bit in August (.378), but was almost identical across the two halves of the season (.312 vs .323). What did change? His walk rate and strikeout rate (which I noted was likely to be a problem in last year’s preview). First half: 4.7% BB rate and 36.8% K rate. Second half: 8.2 and 31.3%. Look, 31.3% is still bad, but coupled with the walk rate it tells a story of a guy who stopped swinging at terrible pitches outside the zone. What backs up this story? His isolated power numbers, which increased from .190 in the first half to .343 in the second half. Again, for those who aren’t stat nerds, a .343 ISO is fucking bonkers. Ted Williams’ career ISO is .289. Devers career ISO is .230. Now, I don’t think there’s any chance that Dalbec keeps that up. But he doesn’t have to. He could be 1/2 that good make solid contributions to this lineup. He’s my most intriguing player this year–especially because he has been hammering the ball in spring training.
The rest of the line up is a bit dicey. They lost Renfroe, who was a great right-handed, middle of the order bat last season. They replace him with–obstensibly–Jackie Bradley, a former favorite who looked absolutely done last year at the plate. I expected the Sox to sign an everyday left fielder (Conforto is still out there, though hurt). That would move Bradley into a bench role, which is probably a better fit for a team that hopes to contend. Jarren Duran could probably use more plate appearances at AAA, though he might make the club as a platoon player.
I love Christian Vasquez as a catcher and hope he has a bounce back year offensively, though he doesn’t need one to be a contributor to this team. His defense and leadership is valuable enough.
Rookies
In terms of rookies, I’ve already mentioned Groome. He’s their most likely impact pitcher. But 22 year old first baseman Tristan Casas is the organization’s top prospect right now. His minor league numbers (career .275/.380/.480) remind me of Joey Votto–great discipline and contact numbers with the potential for power. How much of that power actually comes awaits to be seen. I thought he was a lock to start at first base by June 1st, but Dalbec (at first) and Martinez (at DH) kind of block him. They could always take the defensive hit, move Martinez back to left field, and replace JBJ’s lineup spot with Casas.
Contract Extensions?
Okay, last point: Bogaerts and Devers’ futures. Bogaerts has an opt-out at the end of the year. He has already indicated he will *not* entertain moving to second base. His defense at shortstop is quite bad. But he is the face of the franchise, from all accounts a great person, and still only 29 years old. I’m anticipating a 5/150 contract extension similar to what Jose Altuve got from the Astros. Maybe they have to go 6/175 with a player option in there somewhere.
Devers is a different story. This year will be, unbelievably, only be his age 25 season. It certainly feels he’s been with the team longer than that! But he debuted at age 20. He’s got one year of arbitration left and then will enter free agency. His defense at third base is atrociously bad and I have no idea whether he would entertain a move to first base. However, as I indicated above, he is at worst the 25th best hitter in baseball and, if you offered him a ten year deal this season, you’d be buying his age 26-35 seasons. Those are going to cost you. Nolan Arrenado got 9/275 million. Manny Machado got 10/300. Devers is younger than those guys, but also not near their level on defense. I’ll project a slightly front-loaded 10/310, with a player opt out after year 5. But the Red Sox refused to offer Mookie Betts this kind of deal (topping out at 10/200). Will they be willing to offer it to Devers?
Okay, so this might be my longest season preview ever so I’m just going to stop writing now. Thanks to the four people who made it this far. Go Sox!
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The questions in the Google Doc grow out of the research on reflection that we examined in class before the break. I’d like to give everyone 20 minutes in class to work on this now, then we will discuss responses.
A final deliverable in this class will be to put together a more polished reflective document; similar in length and tone to the reflection Mattingly offers in her co-authored article with Rentz.
Coding Job Advertisements (Hour #2)
Before the break, Jacob and I started working on a research project focused on job advertisements, one that replicates the research by Brumberger and Lauer that we read earlier in the course. I’ve previously mentioned an opportunity to collaborate on this research article, and I wanted to give you a sense of what this work looks like. I have put together a small collection of job ads and a copy of our coding scheme.
Beyond familiarizing yourself with job expectations, this project would expose you to “qualitative coding,” which is a fundamental research method in the social sciences. Coding is also popular in professional domains, particularly usability and experience and marketing, both of which use focus groups conversations to collect audience impressions. That data gets coded for key terms, and then transformed into reports.
Group Meetings and Homework (Hour #3)
First, I’d like everyone to make a copy of the reflection document and spend a half hour working on that. Don’t feel like you have to start with the first question–start with whatever question is most central to your experience. Or whatever questions feels the easiest to answer.
Second, I’d like you to invest at least and two hours into your community engagement project. At the beginning of class, I will ask you to submit a quick memo to Canvas that details what you did during your two hours.
What makes this tricky is that y’all are in different places with your projects. Let me try to address this group by group:
Amy: I need a polished draft of the grant application by Monday at midnight. Bob asked about this over break and I stalled him. I want to review some work and send him something at the end of next week’s class.
Erika: Let’s talk
Cole and Emily: I emailed Michael, asking him if he could return an annotated copy of the draft with instructions guiding your revision (rather than simply revising the document himself). Let’s wait and see if he responds. If we don’t hear something by Friday, I’ll email y’all to figure out what to do next.
Jacob and Austin: Let’s review where things ended with Gwen and figure out your next move
Today I want to give some sense of what constitutes ethics. I’ll start by attempting to differentiate ethics from morals. Both ethics and morals are a part of what we call practical philosophy–rather than dealing with “what is,” practical philosophy deals with how we should act. In simplest terms, both the study of ethics and morals deal with right and wrong. Generally, morality is thought to deal with personal convictions developed via abstract or religious/spiritual principles. Morals can be stated as laws: “thou shalt not kill.” Ethics are thought to be rules derived from “external” agencies–our secular social/institutional contracts. Ethics are far more fuzzy and ambiguous, and often arise as questions that problematize morals. “Thou shalt kill if a solider in war.” And something can be ethical, but not moral and vice versa. Murder, then, is almost always immoral and usually unethical (except, for say, the soldier example, which we wouldn’t call “murder”). However, adultery is often immoral, but it isn’t necessarily unethical (while it is against our understanding of right/wrong, it isn’t something socially deemed illegal–even legally it is grounds for divorce but not prison).
As I said, these are some generic, standard distinctions between morals and ethics. At heart it is a distinction between whether a law or rule has a transcendent or material basis–that is, was this law delivered to us from on high (whether a religious height such as God or a secular height such as Reason–does the principle extend from something trans-human)? I should say that I find the distinction between morality and ethics a bit too simplistic (and so does Bruno Latour–I’ve written about this and him here).
I think of ethics otherwise. For me, morality is the study of the rules that govern our behavior, our internalization of the rules, what we value and believe. The spiritual-internal vs. secular-external distinction isn’t particularly productive for me. I don’t care if the rules come from state agencies or spiritual institutions. Again, morality is how we develop and internalize the rules: thou shalt not kill. A moral. I am not particularly concerned where the rule comes from or who enforces it. I see morality as the study of the rules we internalize, and how those rules govern our behavior.
Ethics, for me, signals how we employ, actualize, our moral values in lived experience. It is how/whether we (choose to) act. It is attending to when the rules seem to fail us, or when rules appear in conflict, or those moments when we make a decision that we think is right even though the rules would tell us it is probably wrong (I think you can probably see how Papers, Please is an ethical game in the sense I am describing–a game in which what is “right” isn’t clear, a game that makes us decide through a haze of uncertainty). If morality is our sense of what should be, ethics is the study of how we actually act. Ethics operates in relation to morality, often in its shadow, in the places where morals break down. I think the study of ethics is the most interesting when we encounter a situation in which or moral convictions come into conflict. Again, if we believe that “thou shalt not kill,” then how do we also celebrate the soldier? How do we operate in the face of competing morals, competing “goods,” competing obligations?
My understanding of ethics is heavily indebted to the work of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas’s work encourages us to recognize our aversion to difference, and the lengths humans will go to eliminate alterity (that which is strange, different, unknown or unknowable to them). He jests that we have an allergy to the strange and different, to the other. We seek to “joyously possess” the world as a certain knowledge. Such possession is akin to mastery–to rule the world without question. To eliminate questions that make us uncomfortable. Rather than deal with the other, we desire the same–we desire to know, label, categorize, understand something. Facing something we do not know, or cannot know, brings out the worst in us. To be ethical, for Levinas, is to learn to inhabit this discomfort, disequilibrium and repress the desire to transform something Other into something familiar, what he calls “the same.” To welcome the other as an other, to let them be different, rather than to convert them into the “same” thing that I already know. [First principle is ethics not ontology–before we know what is, we are aware of the presence of an-other that calls us into being etc etc].
Ethics, for Levinas, is learning to recognize and prioritize others, to put their needs ahead of our own. Ethics becomes extra complicated when we realize that others make different demands on us–and no matter how generous we might want to be, we cannot give everything to everyone. To give to one other often means we have to take away from an other. Thus, in his later career, Levinas pays more attention to the concept of justice. Justice requires I choose between the competing demands of the other and the neighbor–that I chose knowing I must betray one of them. Their is no justice without choice, no choice without imposition. [Levinas’s formula: to make the choice that causes the least amount of violence].
More than just an analytical science of how we act, ethics for me marks our ability to handle, to process, the unknown. How do we feel, and respond to our feelings, when we encounter the strange? Do we curl back in repulsion? Express exasperation (*why do they do that? that’s so weird?*). Or do we become self-critical? Do we invite reflection (*why don’t I do that?*). In short, for Levinas ethics is a practice of hospitality. How/do we welcome the stranger? Something different? Further, what happens when we encounter something we cannot control, when we have to make a decision with no clear right answer, when we face something that resists our mastery?
What does this have to do with the distinction between morality and ethics? I believe that the more we recognize and study ethics (as moments of moral indecision), the better we become at carefully choosing how to act when we have no one true, certain, “right” answer to guide our choice. We have to learn to deal with complexity, and the icky feeling that it can produce in us. Video games can help us do that.
Our last project, focused on the work of Miguel Sicart and the game Detroit Become Human>/a> questions whether games, by constructing *sophisticated* ethical problems, can make players more ethical in the sense I have just worked out.
So, if you haven’t guessed by now, here is my theory for what video games have learned is their unique province: they can leverage the emotional unrest, affectation, difficulty, disequilibrium of Trolley Problems. Foot’s trolley problem is meant to explore the moral consistency, or lack thereof, people use to make life or death decisions. Video games can proceduralize this thought experiment, to make it more visceral or “real.” We feel the decision–this kind of feeling is called “affective” or pathetic (deriving from the Greek term for emotion, pathos).
In a book or a film, we are left to watch the trolley driver pull the switch or not. The author decides. The author justifies. Perhaps she does so to secretly stir our outrage, to get us to deconstruct her flawed reasoning. She can spur reflection, contemplation, resistance. But we are always a bystander to the action, distanced from the choice. We are witness.
But not so in a game. I remember my first play through of Dragon Age: Origins. The details are a bit foggy–I remember encountering some elves and some werewolves. The werewolves were created by dark elven magic? And then, like Frankenstein’s monster, abandoned by their creators. At some point a wolf had killed an elf. Maybe it was self-defense? I honestly don’t remember. But I remember, unexpectedly, having to decide which species to exterminate. Only one can survive. Neither is innocent. And there is no heroic path to saving them both (well there is, but you are probably only going to have that option if you have made a series of other decisions, and only about 1 in every 10 player unlocks that “perfect” ending). The game forced me to be responsible. I must pull the lever and determine who gets hit by the train.
I’ve played games since roughly 1984 on my Atari 2600. I’ve murdered hundreds of thousands, if not millions of aliens and demons and terrorists and zombies and horde (“For the Vangaurd” or “For the Alliance!”). I’ve killed all these things from a moral position that authorizes their death. I’ve never been troubled by all this killing. Those aliens threaten our light. Those demons threaten Tristram. Those terrorists threaten democracy. Those zombies would eat me and the few others remaining in Raccoon City. I killed them all without friction. (Save for Silent Hill 3, one of the greatest mindfuck games of all-time unfortunately lost to history–“they look like monsters to you?”).
But Dragon Age interrupted my joyous possession of the world, my righteous action, my moral foundation. It stung me. This was something different. I introduce the Trolley Problem, the lever, the notions of disequilibrium, ethics, and agency as a way of thinking about games. I imagine many of you are already thinking of games that leverage this dynamic. Soon we will work together to generate lists of games–AAA, mobile, indie–that we can play and explore as a class (in addition to my required experience: Walking Dead episode 1).
Homework
As I indicated above, our first project investigates how video games incorporate ethical decision-making. Not all games do this well–what we need is some theoretical material that gives us a lens for viewing and analyzing games.
We’ll be using the lens constructed by scholar Miguel Sicart, first reading one of his essays and then chapters from his book Beyond Choices. As you read Sicart, keep asking yourself: how does the terms, distinctions, ideas he articulates help me answer these questions:
What should/shouldn’t game designers do to make effective ethical dilemmas in their games?
What should/shouldn’t players do to have more powerful ethical experiences while playing games?
To get us started, I want to read Sicart’s 2013 article “Moral Dilemmas in Computer Games” (you will find this in the Files section of Canvas). I’m not sure how much experience you have reading academic articles, so I’ve designed a Canvas “Quiz” to help structure your reading. Academic articles often have dense, disciplinary-laden prose; given that these articles are written for experts in the field, they do not always define key terms. Further, academic articles often have to acknowledge key debates even if that isn’t the purpose of the article (for instance, you’ll notice Sicart spends a lot of time reviewing definitions of “game play” early in the article–although I do think that section contains some useful and important information).
A Wicked Brief Lecture on Ethics
I’d open with this simple definition of ethics: it is the study of how we make difficult choices. To study ethics is to become more self-reflective and self-aware. As the skit from The Good Life implied, this can lead to a kind of paralysis by analysis (philosophers and theorists often are excellent at discovering and mapping complexity, less great at deciding on one definitive course of action). Rhetoricians (some of us) recognize the need for deep analysis, but often insist on a moment of decision, where analysis has to turn into action. That is a lecture for another course.
Given the complexity of human decision making, there’s a lot of different theories and approaches to ethics. Let me lay out 4 of them:
Deontology or Moral Law
Teleology or Consequentialism
Virtue Ethics
Hospitality Ethics
Deontological ethics are based on identifying moral laws and obligations. To know if we are making the right decision, we ask ourselves what the rules are. For instance, if you didn’t lie to Herschel because lying is wrong, then you were invoking a deontological frame. You made a deontological decision. You worked back from the specific concrete moment to a (prior) conviction. Deontological ethics get critiqued because sometimes moral laws come into conflict and because it requires absolute adherence to the law without thought of context. Three Minute Philosophy: Kant.
Consequential ethics look ahead, from the action and decision, to its consequences. You use prior knowledge to make hypotheses about what will happen. Your focus here isn’t on what other people or institutions would declare right or wrong, but on producing “the greater good.” Different philosophers have emphasized different terms for “good” here–pleasure and pain, help and harm, etc. This is called utilitarianism, which strives to imagine what will make the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. Another form of consequentialism is hedonism, which strives to make the most pleasure and minimize pain. If you didn’t lie to Herschel because you thought lying might lead him to question you further or kick you out of the farm, then you probably made a hedonistic decision. If you didn’t lie to Herschel because you thought lying might lead him to question you and kick you and Clementine out of the farm, then you made a consequential decision. Consequential ethics get critiqued because they can lead us into hurting minority populations (one can absolutely argue, for instance, that slavery contributed to the “greater good”–I’d say they are wrong–but one can rationalize pain in relation to happiness, which can lead us down dark paths). Ethics Explained Intro to Consequentialism.
Virtue ethics are a bit different–and a bit of a mash up between deontology and consequentialism. Like consequential ethics they rely on our imagination. Virtue ethics asks us to imagine, in that situation how an Ideal, good person would act. What are the characteristics of (to quote/fix Cicero) “the good person acting well”? This, in a sense, mixes deontology (who is the good here? what rules do they follow? what institutions would they represent?) with the situational flexibility of consequentialism. If deontology operates around rules that govern behavior, virtue ethics begins by establishing the characteristics common to good people (bravery, compassion, justice, etc). If you didn’t lie to Herschel because you believe a good person should tell the truth and be brave, and trust others (etc.), then you are exercising virtue ethics. Note: this is different than deontology, because here you don’t *have* to follow the rules, and there might be times that lying (say, to protect someone from Nazi pursuit), is justified. Ethics Center: Consequentialism.
Ethics of hospitality also involve an effort of imagination; this time it is our task to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and imagine a decision from their perspective. Is this a decision we would want someone to make if they were in our position? We can think of this as a more radical version of the Christian ethic of the Golden Rule (from Leviticus: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”–note, though, never quote Leviticus in an actual argument because that shit can go south on you real quick), accept here we are self-skeptical enough to realize that the other might not want the same things as us. So rather than assume the other is just like us, we train ourselves to recognize and honor their difference, their alterity. Hence hospitality, since we train ourselves to welcome the strange, the unfamiliar. Ethics, here, trains people to negotiate the unknown and the contingent. Ethics as the impossibility of ever walking in another’s shoes, but trying like hell all the same. [article on Levinas]
Thinking About the Walking Dead
Okay, so we have four different senses of ethics. Chances are all four reverberate through every decision you make. As a phenomenologist, Sicart is interested in what percolated to the surface as you made a decision. This is why rigorous reflection is so important to his method of ethical analysis: what were you thinking about at the time you made a decision? And how did the game designers reward/frustrate/respond to that decision-making? Did they pull a bait and switch (they anticipated I would make X decision, but surprised me). Did decisions become too predictable? To anticipate what I expect to find in the Sicart Summary papers, did they institute a scoring system that told you when they did good, and, if they did, then what notion of ethics are they reinforcing?
These are some of the questions you should be asking yourself as you play your game. Over the next week, I’ll ask you to play about 6-10 hours of your game. You will keep a gaming journal–after every play session (which really shouldn’t be more than 90 minutes), you should write for 15 minutes. Trace important decisions the game asked you to make, their level of complexity, their consequences. Identify where/how the designers made decisions that either amplify or diminish the ethical potential / impact of your game.
There is no right or wrong reflection here. You have space to articulate something smart about a game in light of Sicart’s theories. You might play a game that *doesn’t* involve ethical decision making, but does (you think) engender high ethical impact (my personal favorite for this is The Last of Us).
As I indicated above, our final project investigates how video games incorporate ethical decision-making. Not all games do this well–what we need is some theoretical material that gives us a lens for viewing and analyzing the choices games provide.
We’ll be using the lens constructed by scholar Miguel Sicart, first reading one of his essays and then chapters from his book Beyond Choices. As you read Sicart, keep asking yourself: how does the terms, distinctions, ideas he articulates help me answer these questions:
What should/shouldn’t game designers do to make effective ethical dilemmas in their games?
What should/shouldn’t players do to have more powerful ethical experiences while playing games?
To get us started, I want to read Sicart’s 2013 article “Moral Dilemmas in Computer Games” (you will find this in the Files section of Canvas). I’m not sure how much experience you have reading academic articles, so I’ve designed a Canvas “Quiz” to help structure your reading. Academic articles often have dense, disciplinary-laden prose; given that these articles are written for experts in the field, they do not always define key terms. Further, academic articles often have to acknowledge key debates even if that isn’t the purpose of the article (for instance, you’ll notice Sicart spends a lot of time reviewing definitions of “game play” early in the article–although I do think that section contains some useful and important information).
Community Engagement Project Deliverables and Work Logs
Labor-Based Grading
I wanted to review the syllabus and this course’s idiosyncratic assessment system. Remember that this course is built around labor-based grading, and the syllabus indicates that you will receive a base grade of a “B” if you turn all assignments in, relatively on time, and they meet base expectations for quality.
To earn an “A” in the class, you have to engage in extra-labor. The syllabus lists the following options:
For Project 1, submitting revisions until they reach a 90% on the rubric and/or address instructor comments
Visiting office hours in order to share drafts or ask meaningful questions about a project/reading/work (1-2 visits per semester)
Bringing drafts of Project 1 or Project 4 to the Writing Center
Making consistent and meaningful contributions to class discussions (especially when we are reviewing scholarship or are grade-norming)
Showing leadership and responsibility in group projects
Going above and beyond during our Community Engagement Project (noting what extra work you did in your self-reflection)
Developing a professional portfolio and/or online presence in the Job Materials project
Yesterday I awarded extra-labor credit in Canvas. 4 people have completed a revision of their Job Report (or produced an excellent job report that already spoke to a significant labor investment). Only one person attended the Writing Center. I awarded
Project 2 Grades
Since I changed the Project 2 format, I decided to simply base the grade on the number of the assignments you completed over those three weeks. There were 5 total assignments:
Fadde and Sullivan Discussion Questions
Marisol’s Email
Lauer and Brumberger Reading/Discussion Post
Grant Writing Program Revision
Revised Flyer
So, if you completed 5/5, then you got a 90%. If you completed 4/5, then you got 84%. If you completed 3/5, then you got a 72%. If you completed 2/5, then you got a 50%. I awarded some bonus points here (over the LBG standard 85%) because I thought the quality of work and discussions over those weeks was strong.
Community Engagement Project Deliverables and Work Logs
Before break, you had an opportunity to meet with your team and review your organization’s assets and/or needs. Today, I’d like you to meet with your team and sketch out your goals for the next two weeks. I awarded 6 people credit for leading class discussions (if you feel you should qualify for this and I didn’t award credit, then send me an email and I will both reconsider and pay extra attention to your contributions the rest of the way).
Organizations often using something called a gantt chart to help organize and facilitate team projects; they are a core element of project management. A gantt chart identifies key stages in a project, the deliverables for that stage, and the person(s) responsible for completing it.
I don’t think we need something as complicated as a gantt chart for these projects (though as potential professional communicators and researchers, it is important that you know what they are). I do need to know on what your team will focus, and what each member will be responsible for.
Deliverables
Given the time we have this semester, I’m setting up the following deliverable due dates:
Deliverable #1: April 3rd
Deliverable #2: April 17th
In some cases, I have a clear idea what your deliverables might be. For instance, Grant Writing: your Deliverable #1 will be a funding report and your deliverable #2 will be a draft of a Colorado Common Grant Application (likely for the Poudre River Trail Corridor Inc–I have a lot of material of theirs that you can revise into a grant application). For other groups the future is more wide open. I’ll be coming around today to meet with each group to help identify goals and responsibilities.
Work Logs
Given how idiosyncratic the team projects can be, I’ve devised a system for rewarding your investment and labor: work logs. Logs are generally quick memos that your write me each week that documents what you did for the 4 hours you worked on the project. In your first work log (due this Sunday), I would like you to identify the days/time you will invest your four hours every week: make a clear schedule. This can be one four hour block, though I recommend establishing two 2-hour blocks a week, or one 2 hour and two 1 hour blocks (in addition to Project Management, this is an exercise in Time Management and Deadlines).
You can share URLs to work-in-progress for my review, describe reading and learning you did (say a new technology) with details on how that work shows us in your deliverable drafts, etc. These work logs will be due on Sundays at midnight, and I will review them every Monday morning, so you can also include questions you might have or identify work that you want me to review before our Tuesday meetings.
Note that work logs are also an anonymous way for you to inform me that someone else is late with progress on a deliverable. But, also, note that you are responsible for doing 4 hours of work a week regardless of what other people have done.
Homework
Make sure your team emails me a memo by the end of today’s class indicating what deliverables you will have completed by April 3rd and who is responsible for what elements of that/those deliverable(s).
Start working on those deliverables in preparation for Thursday’s class (location TBD–I have to put in a computer lab request today).
I’ve got a few email questions regarding the paper, and seen a few works in progress, that suggests many of you are working on this “near the deadline.” Let me provide you some resources that can help you wherever you are in the paper process. This is all stuff from the class notes over the last month, reassembled for you in one place.
Paper Requirements
The paper should be 7 to 10 pages (say 1700 to 3000 words).
The paper needs to explore and define catharsis, drawing on the resources listed below. The discussion of catharsis should be about a page, and should reference at least Curran and Aristotle. Essentially, Curran lays out six different senses of catharsis. You need to pick or modify one, and compare it to some others.
The paper should then close read 2-4 scenes from the game that help me understand the answer to one (or more) of the following questions:
Is this game a tragedy (by Aristotelian standards)?
Did you have a cathartic experience?
How/does the interactive nature of the game augment/diminish its potential as a tragedy capable of producing catharsis?
Explore the complex relationship to the game’s protagonist / argue for the agent of the tragic action etc (think of the range of work we saw in the project presentations!)
Your answer(s) to that/those question(s) is your thesis. The paragraphs examining scenes are your evidence in support.
Finally–remember that this is mostly advisory. Meaning–you have to show me you can read several academic sources and define catharsis–but, after that, what you do in the paper is up to you. Make it smart. Point to specific elements, scenes, choices, dialogue in the game. But the exact argument of the paper is up to you.
VI.2-3
Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of emotions.
Here is my blog post on catharsis, which you can quote and argue against in your paper:
I’ll say that I don’t think the purpose of tragedy is to release fear or pity. That’s too narrow. Both in the sense that I don’t think tragic exploration limits itself to what we fear and who we pity (for suffering what seems injust or caprice whims of fate).
Catharsis reaches out to us and reminds us, rekindles, relights, what is already there. Our fear of death. Our fear of loss. Our struggle to find meaning in our lives. Our desire for a soulmate. The pain of rejection or betrayal. Catharsis is a term for the resonance between what we see on the stage, the screen, the page, and our own troubles. This isn’t to say we can’t have a powerful sympathetic response to a narrative to which we have no lived correlate–I find Eli Weisel’s Night to be incredibly powerful despite the fact that I have not experienced genocide. Night is doing powerful work, I would simply insist that it is not cathartic work, because there is no resonance for me. This does not mean it is not “pedagogic” instructive–it certainly aims to teach us how (not) to live. But there is no movement, connection to my life (and, without falling into the “universal” rabbit hole, etc. etc).
So, if I had to lay down a fundamental first principle for catharsis, it would be that there must be a fundamental identification between the action of the tragedy and the audience/reader/player.
