In Which I Briefly Sell Out

When I was in my Psychology of Teaching and Learning Class, my excellent professor Dr. Margaret Cohen (so excellent she rates full name status) gave us a test that supposedly measured divergent thinking.

“Apple. Bowling. What’s the answer?” she asked the class.
I answered “green,” because it’s a word both “apple” and “bowling” have in common (green apple, bowling green).

There were about twenty word pairs, and after each one was greeted blankly by the class. Dr. Cohen would turn to me and say, “Ellen?” and I’d always seem to have the answer. Because. It was freaking obvious.

“Well, I think Ellen proves my point,” she summarized at the end of the test. “Clearly everyone in this room is a convergent thinker, and as you see the test measures Ellen’s divergent thinking ability.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said.
“Yes, it does,” she laughed.
“I think it just measures the typical things like vocabulary access.”
“I rest my case” she said, and continued class over my protests.

Well, BNL plays a similar game , “What Do You Like Better?” Unlike the divergent thinking test, the answer wouldn’t be “apple,” but “pie” or “The Big” or “caramel.”

And I played. I had to play. I had the answer. But to play I had to weigh my smugness against my ban on MySpace and LiveSpace. Smugness won.

(Evidently there is a Space out there that is populated with Neighbors.
You know. Instead of “Friends*.“

*Fake friends. Not like you people. We’re cool. I’ll tell YOU anything.)