i've lately had this suspicion that i'm doing something .. not wrong, but inefficiently. all my time seems to be slipping away, and my research-related to-do list grows by the day. perhaps it used to be funny, but not anymore.
students flooded my office hour today. their homework is due tomorrow and wednesday. i find that to be a bad omen.
i would keep ranting about teaching, but it's getting old and i don't want to think about it until tomorrow afternoon. suffice to say that it's draining -- the lectures, the email, the students and the requests. sometimes it's not even an issue of time, but of the mental space it takes up.
maybe i should stop worrying. a friend of mine once argued that when the teacher doesn't teach so well, the students will work a little harder. i wonder if i should try that out.
argh: just now, another email. sometimes i hate myself. i told the student to email me, otherwise i'd forget. now i can't.
if i counted right, it was 45 minutes. today i thought about new research for a total of 45 minutes, before succumbing to hunger and buying/eating a small chickpea curry with rice from one of the campus food trucks.
i know some of you will say: "45 minutes? Ha! I haven't had time to do research in weeks!" so, sorry: it still bothers me and i want to be productive. if i had larger blocks of time, i'd be writing in efforts to finish up a draft of that Paper Which Refuses To Be Finished (and Which Once Took The Form of a Thesis).
others of you will say: "Janus, you are doing something wrong. If you don't have time for research, then you are spending too much time on other things." i wonder about that, a lot .. or maybe as often as i have time to worry about such matters.
most of tomorrow is wide open. apart from exercise and one appointment with a student, i have the day to scholarly pursuits ..
.. like writing that talk that i'm supposed to give on thursday. oh well. it's a worthwhile endeavor. at some point i have to squeeze in time for research and writing and, as a new challenge ..
.. applying for a grant.
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