This past quarter at the University of Chicago I
participated in a fantastic training course for teaching academic writing. The majority of the course revolved around the concept of reader-centered, rather
than writer-centered, communication. That is, writers should anticipate the
prior knowledge and interests of their potential audience, constantly
scrutinizing their own work at arm’s length. And the main problem that
undergraduates face when writing academic papers is that, even if they intend
to produce reader-centered writing, they don’t know exactly for whom they should write. Peers,
professor, TA? Imaginary academic community? Some guy dressed in a banana suit?
For a while, I’ve been wanting to revive this
Germany/Austria blog from last summer. But the main problem I’m encountering is
that, like a freshman writing the first paper of college [insert nostalgic sigh
here], I have no idea to whom I should
write. This is a blog that will be read by my family members of different
generations, possibly by friends in my program, possibly by friends elsewhere
(like, erm, in Germany/Austria? eventually? maybe?), and perhaps even by mysterious
strangers lurking through the interwebs.
And not knowing to
whom I should write actually does make a difference. It dramatically
changes the nature of the blog.
Some readers might want the blog to be as entertaining
and anecdotal as possible. Prepare to be entertained: the street near my
apartment has a lot of internet cafes, phone stores, computer repair stores,
etc. And to distinguish themselves,
these stores need snappy names; and to have a snappy name you need an acronym.
But these acronyms don’t always sound quite as good in English as they might in
German. Behold:
 |
| That is: Sim und Mobile |
... and just down the street...
 |
| That is: Funk and PC (with a wifi radio icon that looks like a mammogram) |
Wait. So... in a city overrun with English speakers, nobody
thought to run these acronyms by Urbandictionary? Srsly? Any day now I expect
to see
- MILF: Mobile-Internet-Lautsprecher-Flickarbeit
- DP: Daten-Polling
- GGG: Gut, Günstig, Gummi! Ein Hariboladen voller Gummidingsbums für Kinder die bald beim von nebenen Zahnarzt gehen müssen
Humor. Why yes. Goofy things will continue to happen to me here in sunny Berlin. But I can think of other folks who might prefer to read something more intellectual, or reflective, or insightful, or whatever.
And the result is that I’m paralyzed when it comes to
writing this blog, because I’m not sure what aspects of my experience here to
emphasize, or how to write about them, or whether people will judge me or leave me weird
comments if I target one audience and not another.
So...
I’m just going to write whatever I want.
**********************cue
curtain ***********************
