Chaos --> Turbulence --> Rhythm --> Harmony

Turbulence

I wanted to sample from the wiki and the literature about this topic of turbulence, but it was slim-pickins. There were a few things I could have used, but just not enough to satisfy my needs for the project. In light of this, I chose, instead, to write my own definition of the word (the stage), and also write about my own view of the progression of the class through this stage in retrospect (sorta).

What is turbulence you ask? Well silly, it is obviously when your airplane gets all wobbly and makes your stomach feel like you are on a roller coaster and could puke up your airplane peanuts at any minute! I think that is a pretty darn good explanation for turbulence, but it doesn’t exactly fit into this project, now does it? Maybe my good buddy, Merriam-Webster can lend me a hand here, M-W told me just the other day that turbulence is, “the quality or state of being turbulent: as a: great commotion or agitation b: irregular atmospheric motion especially when characterized by up-and-down currents c: departure in a fluid from a smooth flow.” These definitions are all fine and good, but I chose to tweak or “trope” their definitions and make an operational definition that is even more specific to our project and the course.

Turbulence – A transition stage to understanding; beginning the transformation from chaos to order and rhythm. To put it in a way that relates to the path of the class directly, it is the idea that our analytical minds need to create their own structure and order from the chaos to attain understanding and be able to progress in the course. This “turbulence” is the time of aggression and frustration that comes from trying to individually structure the perceived chaos. I would place this stage at about the second week of the course. The first week is always a little confusing, and the second week was when we seemed to try and look past the chaos to some semblance of order (a tiny white light at the end of a very long tunnel). More specifically, I believe this stage to be when people started asking Trey what he expected of them, what this assignment or that assignment was about, and when people started getting into quarrels over the specifics and structure of the class.

Everyone seemed to move through this course of chaos → turbulence → rhythm →harmony at his or her own rate. Some people had a rhythm and an understanding of the class in the first week, while others were still turbulent, or perceiving chaos. Some of us, even now may still be turbulent trying to create a structure in our minds as to what the class should be. But I guess this makes sense, because if everyone went through this transition at the same pace, then it wouldn’t be very turbulent now would it?

Now that the semester is nearing it’s close, I believe that most all of us have moved on from the stage of turbulence to rhythm or harmony. Yet even though the stage was marked with a negative vibe, I still believe it to be a good and necessary stage to understanding and being able to fully appreciate the course. To any of you who may still be in this stage, I hope that you will be able to look back at the course after it is finished and have a little more closure about it in retrospect. I for one believe that I took a rather long time going from turbulence to rhythm. I am (I have learned) a structured person, and I feel comfortable in an environment where I can have set guidelines and know where I stand in the ranks. Once I was able to liberate myself from my turbulent state in the course and think outside the cube, I feel like I was really able to enjoy all of our blogs and prompts and posts. Looking back through my (and other’s) weekly wiki posts, I was able to see this pattern of chaos to turbulence to rhythm emerging. Pretty cool.

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