Day 50: Slow Down Fast Talker

Coming from a background in film production, I started really paying attention to how people speak in order to write better screenplays. It always struck me as odd how unnatural the speech feels in a lot of even the best written scripts, and I wanted to determine why that was, and how I could do it better.

What I realized from this is that character's thoughts always come out way too well formed. Listening to actual people speak, they start, stop, rephrase and continue so many times that it wouldn't make any sense written down. That obviously shouldn't even be replicated in scripts because movies would wind up longer and even harder to understand. And when actual people speak, half the time they don't even use actual words. You wind up talking about that thingy that goes bzzt and *flail*. So only quirky characters on TV talk like actual people, like the Doctor. With his thingy that goes ding when there's stuff.

So, I started trying to emulate "normal" characters, and speak in an articulated, well-formed, clear and concise manner. Because if I can't make my characters talk like actual people, I need to have actual people talk like characters. Which is I guess why I speak in movie quotes, song lyrics, rage comics and tvtropes. It also means that I tend to speak relatively slowly, unless you get me all excited about something, and I tend to think a lot before responding. And so I found this particular information terribly interesting...

Lesson 48: People talk faster now than ever before.

According to Ray Hull, a decade ago, most adults spoke at about 140 words per minute. That was already too fast for children to understand, which explains why I always needed my mom to give me instructions one at a time, as they can only process about 120 words per minute max. Now? Most people speak at 160-180 words per minute. With my sister, I presume, topping the scale at an average of 240 words per minute.

Mr. Rogers apparently talked at about 124 words per minute.

I clocked myself at 130 normally, and 250 when I talk as fast as I can.

Day 17: What even just happened...

Very nearly got to do a project about the history of organized crime in Canada, but turns out, that's not a viable topic. Too bad.

Anyways, today's lesson is an unfortunate truth about scheduling at McGill.
 
Lesson 17: All classes are scheduled to start at 35 minutes past the hour and end at 25 minutes past the hour. Unfortunately, most professors have decided this means that they can start their classes at half past with no issue. I'm sorry, but that's an issue to me. Class is scheduled for 8:35, I will probably show up at 8:33. I am not late. Stop making it so that I seem to be. I do not appreciate it.

Sad Panda.

Day 16: Working, working all the live long day...

Today was a day of calm, relaxing work. I also caved and got myself a deviantART profile where I'm going to catalogue my attempt to teach myself to draw. Tangential but fun!

Work today brought up a very important (to University library users) PSA that has to happen, so I offer it in lieu of the usual lesson.

Course Reserves PSA: A lot of schools allow professors to pull books vital to their classes from normal circulation, and offer them instead as reserves, where you can only borrow them for 2-3 hours at a time. This way, all the students have access to the text books without shelling out the huge amount of money to buy them. Overdue fines for course reserves are BY THE MINUTE. This is something people don't seem to understand. If you are told it is due at 3:30PM, but keep it overnight and return it at 10AM, that is an entire night of minutes you are paying (5cents per minute) for.

So please, for your own pocketbook's sake, return reserve books early when at all possible. And if you return them late, don't take it out on the poor library workers who are merely the bearers of bad news, and have probably spent the entire evening previous apologizing to all your classmates who tried to borrow the book but couldn't because you kept it.

(Also, reserves are different from holds. Please be clear.)

Day 11: Laundry day / See you there / Underthings / Tumbling

An interesting confluence of fate. Because I was running a little late, I ran right past my friend from middle school/early high school, and didn't even know it until he posted on my Facebook wall that he thought he saw my doppleganger. I'm sure there's a lesson in that...

But no classes today, just work. I had a rather redundant feeling lesson on library organization and shelving order. My official supervisor, after more than a week of me working there, taught me how to organize call numbers and alphabetize.

Lesson 13: People love to teach, but hate to learn. Being taught information you feel you already know inspires feelings of indignation, but teaching people about things, even if they claim to already know them, makes you feel productive and useful. If you feel like you already know something, sitting and listening may feel like a waste of time, but you never know when you might learn that a space counts as a letter.