There is nothing to go and do#

No stranger to approach. Nothing to trade. No stall, no ask, no partner found in a corridor.

Crossing 6 is made entirely out of the other five. The doing this fortnight is assembling an honest account of them — and it is not the easier job.

George Curious

Twelve weeks already has a shape#

McAdams spent a career on the life-story model of identity: people don’t carry their past as a list of things that happened, they carry a story with a shape — and the shape gets chosen, usually by nobody in particular.

Twelve weeks isn’t a life. It’s long enough to have picked up a shape you didn’t decide on.

George Curious

The shape you’ll reach for#

The bad bit turns out to have been worth it. McAdams calls that a redemption sequence, and it’s the most available story there is — it’s also the one he warns about, because not everything redeems and a narrator who insists it does stops sounding honest.

Five redemptions in a row isn’t an account of a semester. It’s a template with your name on it.

George Curious

The semester you remember isn’t the one you had#

Kahneman’s experiencing self and remembering self keep different books. What you retain of something is closer to its most intense moment and how it ended than to the hours you actually spent inside it.

So the Crossing you now think of as the good one is data. It is not the record.

George Curious

Go back to what you said at the time#

Your five clips. Whatever you told the room the week after each Crossing, while it was close enough to the moment to still be unflattering.

That’s the record. What you’d say today is the edit — and the gap between the two is the most interesting thing you’ve got.

George Curious

Two weeks, two rooms#

Week 11 — Discussion Lab. No stage, no clock, no run-through. Small groups, talking each other’s semesters over while the account can still change.

Week 12 — the Hallway Finale. Your slot, your video, and then you sit through everyone else’s.

George Curious

What’s actually checked#

• you talk through your five Crossings with at least one peer, not just read your account out loud at them
• you name, out loud, which of the five Crossings you're least sure landed
• you leave with a peer's honest reaction to your account, not just your own read of it

Discussion Lab, and what the whole thing is weighed against is on Legacy.

George Curious

You won’t find the hole in your own head#

Ask someone to rate how well they understand something, then ask them to explain it step by step. The rating and the explanation don’t match. The explaining is what finds the gap.

Your account has only ever been explained to somebody who was there for all of it. You.

George Curious

Anecdote, then the point of it#

Ira Glass’s two building blocks. The anecdote: this happened, then this, then this. The moment of reflection: somebody says what the point of it was. Both have to be interesting, and he’s blunt that a great sequence of events with nothing said about it still fails.

Five anecdotes and no reflection is a diary. A verdict with no five Crossings under it is an opinion.

George Curious

The video does the corroborating#

Five clips, one per fieldwork Crossing, played in full inside your slot. They aren’t decoration at the end — they’re the evidence that what you’ve just claimed about each Crossing actually happened that way.

Have the file ready and tested. The slot is for presenting.

George Curious

Anything with a person in it can vanish#

A featured person can withdraw consent right up to the Finale, and when they do, that footage comes out of your video.

Which is why the version without them isn’t a formality — it’s the clip you actually own. Policies has the three steps, in order.

George Curious