Tasks vs Experiences
I have been busy from my feet hitting the ground at 5:00am until this moment (4:15pm). I decided to force myself to take a couple of minutes to post here as a way to "unwind" before I go back to work. I have:
1. Ran my 10 to complete the week.
2. Wrote two letters of recommendation.
3. Graded an exam.
4. Prepared printouts of scores of TWO exams so that I can spend some time inputting them into our LMS (the electronic classroom that is the student's gradebook and repository).
5. Cultured my nematodes.
6. Surveyed my fruit flies to know which strains I will need to reculture next week.
7. Wrote a draft of a presentation for a talk that is going to be ultimately given by a young undergraduate of mine next week. The student will be needing to fine tune it to her liking this weekend and get it back to me for final approval.
8. Wrote out (on the computer) the game plans for four new research projects, created text groups for the students to use for "easier" communication, and e-mailed all of them these documents and also additional instructions.
* * * * * *
9. After I get done here, I am going to go and unpack some replacement incubators the Department had ordered for me for one of my classes. The other ones had gone belly up after 20+ years of use.
10. Also, after I get done here, I have to go investigate and assess my rodents to see if I need to come back on Saturday to work with them, or if they would wait until Monday. I suspect I will need to come back tomorrow as much as I would rather not.
* * * * * *
All of the above have been a crap-load of TASKS I have been doing.
Not much if anything has been an EXPERIENCE.
To me, this is one of the problems of late.... too much of life seems to have become just getting TASKS done, and hardly any.... IF ANY actual EXPERIENCES. This seems so wrong and so ass-backwards to the way I think life should be lived.
The only actual experience I had yesterday until I sad down to eat a late, late dinner with my wife was the Retiree's Cigar Group. It is an experience. Perhaps that is what has me gravitate towards it so. Yesterday's time there was only in the ballpark of average. It was quite crowded, so I mostly sat and listened as is my typical in bigger groups. Part of the "averageness" I think also stemmed from the needed/known TASKS I had to do last night after I got home from the group.
I am more and more convinced that life in 2025 is just TOO DAMN BUSY. Life did not used to be this harried and hectic. I want to become a hermit sometimes, just to have some TIME to BE and not just DO.
I also am missing my pipes a lot today. More than I write about it here lately. It seems like I write the same things about them every time I write. So, I have been trying to not clutter up as much space on them.... but they do occupy my mind.
PipeTobacco
1 Comments:
One of the tasks you mention is:
Wrote a draft of a presentation for a talk that is going to be ultimately given by a young undergraduate of mine next week.
Could you elaborate a bit on this? Are students no longer expected to do and to present their own work? I can't imagine any of my professors giving me drafts for any talks I was expected to present. Have things changed that much in the last few decades? If I was selected to give a talk, it was because of my own work, and I was expected to present my own work. The only example I can recall that comes even close to this took place when (after graduation) I was on a four-presenter panel with a former professor who'd become a good friend and professional collaborator; the four of us reviewed each others' presentations before the panel and made comments and suggestions to each other. But the idea of an instructor drafting a student's work for her is completely outside my frame of reference. I'd love to hear more about this.
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