Personally, I couldn’t give a FAQ!
‘Frequently Asked Questions’, or because I’m a little rude, as I like to call them, ‘FAQs’, is a relatively new acronym, coined by NASA at the start of internet times.
But the truth is, we were all asking the original Frequently Asked Questions way before the internet even existed, back on childhood family road trips. In the form of, ‘How much further?’ and ‘Are we there yet?’
And again in our existential phases in our early twenties, as we drank cheap wine and took long, thoughtful drags on cigarettes, with ‘Is there a God?’, or ‘How long is a piece of string?’
We’re also big on questions here, such as:
When I stand up, where does my lap go?
And we’re full of the strangest answers, the likes of:
The word "LETHOGICA" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.
(Although surely it’s always harder to remember the word ‘lethogica’?)
Ultimately we believe that having a lot of questions and some of the answers, not only makes you easier to hire, but makes you more inviteable to dinner parties too.
Of course, nobody has ALL the answers, but Padgett Powell, may just have all the questions. The Interrogative Mood (a novel?), is the perfect answer to an afternoon’s reading.
It’s not really a novel, because how can 164 pages of question after question be a novel?
But somehow it feels like one, compelling and readable.
The Interrogative mood, an excerpt:
“Are your emotions pure? Are your nerves adjustable? How do you stand in relation to the potato? Does a nameless horse make you more nervous or less nervous than a named horse? In your view, do children smell good? Could you lie down and take a rest on a sidewalk? Did you love your mother and father, and do Psalms do it for you? If you are relegated to last place in every category, are you bothered enough to struggle up? Does your doorbell ever ring? Are you inclined to favor the Windward Islands or the Leeward Islands? Does a man wearing hair tonic and chewing gum suggest criminality, or are you drawn to his happy-go-lucky charm? Are you familiar with the religious positions taken regarding the various hooves of animals? Will you spend more money for better terry cloth? Is sugar your thing? Are you disturbed by over-technical shoes?”
It’s fair to say that we’re obsessed with the mighty question, and that’s why we ask a fair amount of them in our courses. At the end of each lesson, students are invited to answer a question based on what they’ve just learnt.
We have 4 main types of questions:
1. Multiple choice - Does what it says on the tin.
2. Poll questions - Again pretty straight forward, helps you see how your answer racks up against everyone else’s.
3. Opinion based - These aren’t so much about being right or wrong, mostly they’re about gaining the confidence to give the answer a go. And then you also get to see everyone else's answers.
4. Action-based answers - Marked in-house by our chief question and answer geeks, who aim to mark each question within half an hour. But don’t worry, you can progress to the next lesson without having to wait for your most recent answer to be marked, so that answers that.
If you get the answer wrong we offer feedback, if you get it right we give you an A. And exceptional answers get bonus points, penguin .GIFs and secret awards.
In fact, questions are so important to us, we even offer the answer to the most important question of all, What’s the meaning of life?
