Storytelling in Undergraduate Education Preparation

Foreword

• When students are faced with the decision of whether or not to go to college, anecdotal storytelling is often used as a persuasion tool to convince the students not to attend a college or university. These stories can be short or long and even given in an oral presentation or in formal or informal blogs. In my quest for my own purpose in life, I have stumbled across many stories of college dropouts who found greater meaning in their life after they retired from main-stream education. I became aware of this particular autobiographical story in a translation class as part of a consecutive interpreting assignment. 

Example Story

• This story was shared by Steve Jobs when he gave the commencement speech at Stanford University. Most of the information is now fairly well-known as Mr. Jobs' story is also such. His purpose is to show that all things don't have to work perfectly for everything to work out perfectly.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

Analysis

• Spoiler alert! Mr. Jobs actually begins his story with a statement of what happens at the end of the story. This proves to be quite effective because his purpose in telling the story is not to give a timeline of events but to provide useful analysis of the sequence of events and give them greater value. This is clearly indicated by the rhetorical question he asks near the beginning. He then goes on to answer the question, providing hidden motivations for every action being taken throughout the story. At the end of [this section of] the story, Mr. Jobs explains his mixed emotions after reaching his own catharsis and explains the positive outcomes of what may seem like a negative or tragic ending to the story.

Retelling the Story

• Because I am so familiar with the Steve Jobs story, I will add a some TRUE details to this story in order to persuade students to take courses they are interested in but not to drop out

I never believed my college education would have any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, what I learned in my calligraphy class proved very valuable. And we designed it all into the Mac, which became the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. 

Even though my motivation for trying a new class came from the stress of paying an expensive tuition with my parents savings, I found more joy and more success in following my own interests than sticking to the status quo. The truth is, at the time, I just didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I was wandering, and quite frankly, wasting my time and my parents money. I'm glad that, in spite of the fear and the difficulty, I stepped outside my comfort zone and tried something new.

• I feel like I may have cheated by adding too much information. But by adding a more specific benefit, the persuasion for trying a new class becomes much more powerful. I'm not sure that I was able to reach persuasion as succinctly as Steve Jobs was, but I do feel like my retelling of the story is persuasive to the new purpose.