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Feet & Philosophy

It is a nice feeling having the last week of the semester (last week before final examinations) upon us here at the U. Today went well. I gave two lectures. One was on the basic history of the sciences of ecology and ethology, and in the other class, I focused on a discussion of the anatomy of the male and female reproductive systems. It is satisfying to have the student evaluations already completed for all three classes, and my final lecture in the morning is a repeat of the male and female reproductive anatomy lecture from today. When I leave tomorrow, I will not have to talk in my loud, distinct "lecture" voice for 5 weeks. It shall be nice to just have that length of quiet chit-chat.

This afternoon, following lunch, I went into the back, back office, and sat at my computer, working on some new, updated protocols for work my research students commonly do. I make these protocols to outline for them the procedures to follow so the data collected all meets a unified standard. It has been my project for most of the semester, as I have never had a FORMAL protocol book for my students. Instead, I have talked to each of them individually and they all have had scraps of paper that they jotted notes upon and/or inherited dog-eared notes from former students. As I finish each protocol, I insert it into the lab notebook (3-ring binder) in its own plastic page protector. It should prove very durable and also helpful to the as they learn new tasks.

I was not in a particularly didactic mood, so I only wrote one new protocol. Instead, by about 2pm, I decided I had enough. I went on-line, and proceeded to connect to the Internet broadcast of one of the myriad of National Public Radio stations I enjoy. I picked the Barow, Alaska NPR today to hear not only good news and Inuit music but an interesting perspective on a land/region I admire. Lately, the other NPR station I have been listening to is the one in Kent, Ohio. I have been enjoying their especially orchestral heavy form of classical music. After getting the Barow station set and playing, I pushed away a bit from the desk, put my feet up on the desktop, filled a bowl of cranberry-tinctured burley in my pipe and stared out the large window into the sky. My thoughts were contemplative and philosophical... I was weighing different possible options in my mind for a new research strand I wished to get underway in the next several weeks. For me, the crux of the issue I wanted to mull over in my mind was... the method of administering the neurohormone to the rats. I have the option of administering the dosage in several different ways, and basically I am contemplating which would be most likely successful.

I sat with my feet up, contemplating, day-dreaming, and smoking my pipe, quietly for most of the rest of the afternoon. As I had the office lights off (I worked with the light from the window), and the NPR turned down quite low, no one knew I was in the back, back office, and I had delightful quiet and solitude to allow thinking.

At 4pm, I sat up, and shut down the computer. I then went back to my main office, closed things down there.... three students stopped by in the 10 minutes I was in there packing my briefcase to take home, shutting down that computer, and tidying up the office a bit. The three students all had a multitude of questions, which I tried to help them with quickly. I left campus at roughly 4:15 and drove home.

A nice day. More productive in terms of developing ideas and thoughts than I have had in several weeks.... it was not just a day of me lecturing and helping students. Do not get me wrong, I love teaching and helping students. But as a scientist as well, I also crave and desire time to think, ponder, plan, and execute research.

PipeTobacco