by derfrischeflo

Train what you cannot train for

by derfrischeflo

In my response to Saif’s (very kind and thoughtful) response to our student information sheet I intuitively wrote that this class trains you for what you cannot be trained for. There maybe something to it.

Leaving aside the scent of hubris that comes with finding a conclusion of a class after the first session, this may actually the deeper sense of improv in general. The best answers given in “three things” — a game I liked very much– reveal one thing very clearly: the ‘alarm and shock’ part of the brain is responding. That means immediate action. That does not mean: any sense in this action. (One may even argue that the moment the answers are sensible they are not immediate in the sense of the game but rather somewhat delayed)

So I personally learned from that game that you may want to have that part of your brain stimulated when there is virtually no time or in a situation of last resort. However, in any context that requires reasonable action (and I fear this kind of situation is slightly dominating in the life of a Stanford student) you don’t want to improv. Not at all. You want to step back and escape the temptation of an unreasonable response.

So learning with improvisation is learning what you cannot learn. Train what you cannot train for.

To prove my point I attached a short clip from an interview with German Federal President. Recently it was revealed that the President and his wife stayed with wealthy friends and did not pay for these privileges. The interview goes:

Reporter: Why couldn’t you have asked your friends for a check and payed them EUR 150 per night (I don’t comment on the quality of that question)

President: Do you ask your friends to pay EUR 150 when they stay at their place?

Reporter: YES (!!!) — watch how quickly she responds!!!

The internet community was making fun of that response for days after this interview which was deemed crucial for the future of the Federal President.

The point I want to make is — I am sure if she had taken two more seconds she could have avoided all of that embarrassment and I am pretty sure she does not actually make her friends pay. She only responded through the IMPROV part of her brain.