Journal for 2003 September 14

The students may never know how much I sacrifice for them. While my friends said to me, "Let's smoke pot! Let's get high." I said, "Oh, no. I have student homework to grade. There's no time for me to play hooky." And for the next several hours I sat among them in a pot filled room, grading lab after lab. But then, I don't like getting high very much-- there's too much to do, and the world of pot has thus far failed to grant me any wisdom.

Friday went well, in that I was not incapacitated at all by my lack of sleep. Jill decided to change things around at the last minute in such a way that I didn't get to talk about the Blackfin today, but I now get this coming Friday to run all by myself. It's a scary thought, but I can be systematic, and plan things to fill those three hours that are nice and project oriented, and it will be okay. Probably the biggest thing is not to be too overwhelming; I need to keep saying "this is not material for you to memorize; I want to engage you in it now just so you get a sense of things. So, if you don't understand something, let me know right away."

Yesterday, before the evening, I did essentially play hooky. Claudia and I tried to go to a WTO protest, but (probably because of my subconscious actions) we slept through the teach-in, and couldn't find where the protest had gone, and didn't know when it was over. This aggrivation, combined with the feeling that its always her who plans these things, got to Claudia. It's my job, now, to organize the next thing that we go to, and know the whens and wheres, and solve the problems when we get to them. In general, I'm going to try to offer my help more explicitly, instead of vaguely asking if help is needed, or just waiting for her to delegate.

I also owed Claudia some grovelling for saying to Jocelyn that, although Claudia probably won't appreciate my music any time soon, would she like a CD that I'm putting together of the songs of the Celtic genre that I think the prettiest. Claudia noted that saying things like that pushes her to a more extreme position than she wants, and to hear it in front of her like that makes her feel horrible. I never know if that means that I should say it behind her back, or what-- from my point of view, it seems more fair to tell her my perception of her, so that she can tell me it isn't true. But I suppose that's exactly what happened, for she told me that she appreciated much of my music (just not the pirate stuff), but just that her true music love is Classical.

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If you have any questions or comments that you want to email, feel free to contact me, jrising@ mit.edu.