The power of vexation

One of the classes I'm taking at the moment has an assignment related to Klout.com. This is a website that assesses an individual's social media influence. On a scale of 0-100, individuals are given a score which relates to how far and wide they reach from a social media perspective. Twitter and Facebook are the primary drivers of one's Klout score and the more people like what you say on these platforms (like, share and/or comment what you've said), the higher your Klout score. Our assignment is to raise our Klout score by a given increment over a one month period.

To say that people are annoyed about this assignment would be an understatement. Speaking personally, I dreamt about my Klout score for the first 4 nights after the assignment! This orange box with big white letters would stare back at me accusingly - "I have not gone up..." it would shout.

After providing additional background on the reasoning behind the assignment, the professor said something intriguing. He said "you're vexed and I want you to be vexed. When people are annoyed, uncomfortable...vexed, then they learn; then, they remember what they've learned."

Thinking back to other circumstances in my life, I have to say that I agree. Last term, we had a challenging class on Finance. We were frequently presented with complex spreadsheets to analyze and solve. I was vexed. I wanted to figure these things out and it caused me to push myself far more than I might have typically. As a result, the process of cracking these problems is something that I will really remember. I learned something and it stuck.

So, bring on the vexation I say (but first, share, like, comment on my twitter, ok - I still need to raise my Klout score) @laurainbusiness