Habits and experience<\/i>
Today I’m trying desperately to finish a paper that is far<\/i> too late. Part of the delay is the craziness that is my professional and union life, but another part is that I am delving into two subjects that I have not been diligent in keeping up with. I am keenly interested in them, but they are on the margins of my main research interests, and when one’s time is short… <\/p>\n
The consequence is that I now have to play catch-up. If I weren’t pressed for time in other ways, I would enjoy this process more, because over my life I have repeatedly been required to undergo a “drink from the firehose” experience in reading. It is an exhausting short-term experience, and it challenges me to engage all sorts of skills simultaneously, with the mental effect nothing quite so much like keeping a number of balls in the air at the same time. No, not juggling balls: more like a lit torch, a chef’s knife, a soap bubble, and a ceramic bowl filled with yogurt. All of them. If you can keep them up there, it’s quite a thrill. <\/p>\n
Usually, graduate students have these experiences in high-stakes environments, as major papers at the end of a course. Or, rather, if they do<\/i> have drink-from-the-firehose feelings, they’re not likely to be successful. Is there a way to give them that experience in a strongly positive sense, with far lower stakes?<\/p>\n