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Welcome to ANI, In the Air, Online, and Around Baltimore.
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This is Talk About Tuesday, where I talk about some aspect of the school.
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So this is the first week of our fully transitioned online of the 2020-2021 school year.
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And I thought I'd talk a little bit about community.
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So a really big, important component of our school is community.
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Basically it's having to interact with other human beings.
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It sounds like not a hard requirement to be able to satisfy, but surprisingly, it really
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is.
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Every human being is a very complex organism to interact with.
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A lot of different variability, a lot of different notions, do a lot of different things, hear
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things differently from one another, express things differently, verbalize, non-verbalize
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things differently.
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A lot of complexity in really understanding and knowing another human being.
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And now, when you have that applied to a whole community, it's quite a set of skills to
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figure it all out.
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And so, you know, that's what happens in person.
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Even for people who don't seem to be engaged, as long as they're around other people in
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some fashion, they often are.
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You know, they might be sitting in a room quietly, but they're still around.
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Their brain's picking up on things, you know, varying extents.
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And you know, so what is the brain doing?
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Well, the brain is, I think, creating like sort of probability models of how everybody
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interacts there.
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The brain is almost like learning to replicate, you know, what those people will be likely
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doing.
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And part of it is, you know, the actual physical motions and stuff.
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When you catch someone out of the corner of your eye, you often know who it is just by
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the way they move.
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You know, and whenever debating or arguing someone, when you've known them long enough,
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you know exactly what they're going to say, you know their behaviors, you know what that
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raised eyebrow means, yeah, I'm looking at me, I love raising one eyebrow.
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So now, when we go online, you know, so much of that is gone.
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And I think that that's what makes it sort of really hard.
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That's why, you know, having the ability to see the videos of one another is very helpful.
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It grounds us, it's not just the voices, you know, it's all of it.
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And so, I mean, that's a challenge that we need to deal with being online.
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How do we connect with one another?
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It's just not easy.
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It really requires far more effort than it happens in person.
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And ideally, we will only be fully online for a short time.
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But unfortunately, the world is far from ideal.
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And the likelihood is that it will be a bit of time before we can come back in person.
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So what can we do?
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Well, all we can really do is just try to keep connecting with one another.
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Have to settle for, you know, text writing, vocalizations, and ideally some video chatting,
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and you know, seeing one another and appreciating what it is that they do.
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So yeah, that's kind of my thought of the Tuesday, basically, my words to everyone who
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might be listening to this is to really think about how you can connect with other people
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in some fashion, or at least witness them.
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You don't even necessarily need to say or do anything, just be around people, observe
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them, you know.
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So we have this community and, you know, hopefully everyone can get on Discord and make connections
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and all that good stuff.
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So that's my hope.
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Alright, well, that's enough for this Tuesday.
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See you all next time.