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Working with ts Maydm studen
JILLANA PETERSON
We all use extrapolation in our lives. It’s a large part of our decision-making process—taking past information and projecting it to make predictions. Ruthless extrapolation, however, describes information extrapolated beyond its context. One example Professor Tom Murphy of University of California, San Diego provides is people in the ’60s believing we’d be on Mars by 2020 simply because of the rate technology was growing at the time. He also notes that the way many people use of the phrase “common sense” is synonymous with ruthless extrapolation. Now let’s apply the concept to our biases. Think about someone you consider kind and intelligent who just happens to belong to a group you disagree with (Democrats, Republicans, anti-vax, pro-choice, etc.). Do you see them as a reason to reassess your understanding of the individuals in that group, or do you instead choose to view them as the exception? 26 | m a d i s o n e s s e n t i a l s
At the Food Pantry Gardens
by Kyle Jacobson
All this to bring up the very thoughtful Jillana Peterson. Jill grew up in northern Wisconsin between Eau Clair and Minneapolis. “I didn’t necessarily see eye to eye with everybody,” she says. “But I really loved this whole spectrum of opinion—political, religious. I also come from a household where my mother’s a Jehovah’s Witness and my dad’s a Lutheran. Always in my life seeing how people with very different philosophies or beliefs coexist and get along.” Like many kids growing up in the ’90s, Jill had the dream of moving out to Seattle to be at the heart of the grunge scene, but that changed when, in 2005, she had the opportunity to be the first member of her family to go to college, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, to be specific. When she first arrived in Madison, she says, “I was like a kid in a candy shop talking to people on the streets. I made friends everywhere I went because I was so excited to be surrounded by people.”
At the River Food Pantr y
Being around a much larger number of people meant being exposed to a lot of different ideas and worldviews. “I grew up my whole life with people just demonizing Madison and Milwaukee.” In terms of ruthless extrapolation, there were people in those numbers who probably didn’t know many others from Milwaukee and Madison. On the other side of the coin, while at university, “I was always feeling like I had to defend everything outside of Madison to people who would make these comments. ‘No one’s educated.’ ‘No one cares about things.’ I’m just like, this is my family you’re talking about. These are my neighbors. Even if they have different politics, they’re not bad people.” Not without her own views, living between two very predominate Wisconsin perspectives exposed Jill to a wide range of individuals. Effective communication was not only vital to maintaining the relationships
