On 07/02/2009 06:56 PM, Tiago Bortoletto Vaz wrote: > I don't > feel confortable answering those question which I had to do some research to be > able to write something Why? I happily researched all the questions during the NM process before writing my responses, even for the questions i felt that i already had answers to. It was an opportunity to conduct a deliberate exploration of useful details, led by a helpful guide. And writing the answers in my own words was useful too: i find that my understanding after explaining an idea to a third party is always deeper than after just reading someone else's framing of the idea. Writing real answers to the questions encouraged me to go down that path. And if i didn't understand one of the questions and i got stumped researching it, i didn't feel it was wrong to ask for help or a pointer for further reading. So I don't think the question and answer part of the NM process is (or should be) a pop quiz. If we're going to frame it academically, I see it as more of a study guide and a series of reports to an intelligent advisor. The back-and-forth of the questions also establishes a baseline for understanding how a person acts and interacts over sustained e-mail contact, which is crucial to their future as a DD. It would be a shame if this nuanced, human-oriented, skill-building process were made into a checklist, a multiple-choice rigamarole, or a way of "ranking" prospective DD's somehow. Why create a system that would encourage smart but unethical people to game it? This is *not* to say that the process shouldn't be improved. There is a lot of unclear waiting at various stages, which is aggravating, and the initial introduction to the process can be fairly unfriendly. But the actual Q&A part is not the problem, from what i've seen. --dkg
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