Saturday, November 15, 2008

From the Great Young Gyeom Kim

Today in listening class we were doing the This American Life where John Hodgeman asks people which super power they would choose: flight or invisibility. I asked the students what they would choose before we listened, and most said flight. (Except Won Kyu (AKA Juan Q) and the new shifty guy from Libya.)

In the story, John Hodgman says that he ultimately believes that flight represents confidence and heroism, and invisibility represents fear and sneakiness. He surmises that people who choose flight are trying to project a heroic image of themselves, when in reality, the only honest answer is invisibility. He frames it as "a question of whether we want to be the person we hope to be or the person we fear we are."

After we listened, I asked the students if they wanted to change their answers, and this was Young Gyeom Kim's:

I'm going to keep flight, because it's better to be a confident liar than a fearful person.

One for the ages, Young.

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