SLOP1744 · Week 1
Starting a Conversation
George Curious — what you’ve signed up for
Haskell Byte — how to actually do it
George Curious
What you’ve signed up for
Campus is an economy
Not a metaphor you have to like — just the one this course runs on.
Attention, trust and serendipity behave like currency: finite, unevenly distributed, worth more to some people than others, and completely wasted if you never spend any.
George Curious
So the coursework is spending it
Twelve weeks of deliberately spending attention on people you don’t know, and finding out what it buys.
That’s the whole goal. Not networking, not confidence as a personality upgrade — an actual record of what you spent and what came back.
George Curious
SLOP1744
Hallway Economics
Hallway Economics treats campus as an economy: attention, trust and serendipity are the currency, spent by walking up to strangers — for anyone who'd rather learn by doing than sitting still. You don't just report back what happened, you reflect on what the investment bought.
George Curious
What you walk out with
Five real interactions with people you didn’t know at the start of the semester. A few lines written about each one while it was still fresh, and five clips that prove it happened.
The clips become one video. You play it in week 12, and it either backs up what you’re claiming or it doesn’t.
George Curious
A Crossing is two weeks
Both halves are the Crossing — and the sixth is where you account for the other five. All six Crossings.
George Curious
Who’s teaching it
George CuriousCrossings 3 & 6 — Presence at Scale and Legacy, and the entire semester
Haskell ByteCrossing 1 — Starting a Conversation
Yu TobeCrossing 2 — The Exchange
Dora De ExploréCrossing 4 — Risk & Rejection
Moana LizaCrossing 5 — Building With Others
Consultation times, contact details, and who to ask first are on the People page.
George Curious
What it’s worth
- 35%Crossing Participationevery Crossing
- 25%Midsemester CheckpointCrossing 3, week 6
- 40%LegacyCrossing 6, week 12
Full briefs on Assessment.
George Curious
Two rules
Nothing is late, because nothing is submitted. Every mark on this course is made in the room, on the day.
Your reflections are yours. No AI tool drafts them, rewrites them, or generates any part of them.
Policies has the rest — including what to do if you want another person in one of your clips.
George Curious
Haskell Byte
How to actually do it
Say something, or headphones in?
You’re on the bus. There’s a stranger next to you. Forty minutes to go.
Haskell Byte
Nearly everyone gets this wrong
Haskell Byte
Talking to strangers is a protocol, not a trait.
You’re not bad at this. You’re running a bad forecast — and a forecast is fixable.
Haskell Byte
Part 1 — Reason
You need a reason to be standing there that isn’t this course.
“Because my course told me to” isn’t a reason. It’s an apology with a citation.
The person at the same library table every week. Whoever’s ahead of you at the coffee cart with nothing to do but wait. The reason can be small. It has to be real.
Haskell Byte
Part 2 — Opener
Not “so, what do you do.”
An opener has to survive contact: answerable by someone who wasn’t expecting you, and it has to leave them somewhere to go.
Ask about the thing in front of both of you. It’s there, it’s shared, and it’s evidence you were paying attention.
Haskell Byte
Part 3 — Exit
Conversations end. Plan for it, or you’ll stay ninety seconds too long and that’s the part you’ll remember.
Name the thing you’re leaving for. Say what you got out of it. Go.
An exit that doesn’t slam the door is what makes a second conversation possible.
Haskell Byte
Someone standing at the edge of a room where everyone else already seems to know each other — that edge is where Crossing 1 actually happens.
Say Something
Haskell Byte
Half a Crossing
You did it. Nobody heard about it. That’s half.
Haskell Byte
What a report-back sounds like
Next week is How It Landed. Short, live, one at a time: who you approached, what you actually said, what came back, and whether it was worth the walk over.
The room is listening for the version you’d have given five minutes after it happened — hesitations included. A report that’s clearly been tidied up since Monday reads as exactly that.
Haskell Byte
Someone will ask you a follow-up
What you’d have done if they’d said no. Whether you’d approach the same way again. What you noticed about yourself halfway through.
That isn’t a stress test bolted onto the report. It’s the other half of it, and it’s marked as its own criterion — see Crossing Participation.
Haskell Byte
Seek discomfort.
Yes Theory — a channel built almost entirely out of asking strangers for things
Haskell Byte
This week
- Say something to someone you don’t know. For a real reason, not this one.
- Get a clip. It’s the first of your five.
- Turn up next week and tell us how it landed.
Haskell Byte