4
Locate the Bait
What we gain when conversations lose
We’ll begin this chapter with another story from Jason:
When I came to MIT in 2005 to pursue a PhD, I joined a group of graduate student advocates. We put together a little manifesto about “what MIT should do” on sustainability, collected dozens of signatures from faculty, and handed them off to the administration. We asked for a meeting with the president of MIT so we could present our demands in person. We felt pretty cool.
When we heard back from the president’s office, however, we were told that they didn’t know what to do with our proposal: we had no clear “asks,” and they didn’t know how to interpret what we were requesting.
To be honest, we didn’t know either, but it was easier to ...
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