Journal for 2003 November 19
A student recently asked me, "How do they make this worth it to you?" I thought that was a curious question. Always before when I taught, it was not a matter of anyone else making it worth my time-- I did it because I felt that teaching already was worth my time. Olin is a happenning place, and I want to be part of happening things. Granted, I would much rather be setting the course than handling an oar, but in the end, we're all handling our own oars.

I'm more caught up on grading than I would ever have expected to be, given Tuesday morning when a problem set, a quiz, and a make-up exam problem were due. I attribute this entirely to the existance of a last minute-- it was drop date for Olin. I think that the same may apply to continuing my education. Self-imposed deadlines should not exist to artificially restrain homework and warp learning. They can be a part of the game to make it exciting. I need only settle on a topic, set a reasonable short-term goal, and let the long-term goals come as they will.

Observations:

An old chinese woman whom Claudia might have agreed to type up and edit some notes got very angry today after Claudia didn't do the work and didn't return the papers. However, because Claudia was busy, I bore the full brunt of this old woman's wrath, verbally. She threatened to take action against Claudia for wronging her, starting with talking to people at the Political Science department. This is after offering to take Claudia to eat, just to get the papers back. I ended up hunting down Jocelyn who had the papers from Claudia, and returning them.

I was annoyed at having to do this work for Claudia due solely to Claudia failing to follow up on her own affairs. _How to win Friends_ says never to criticise anyone, but I still wanted to find some way to make Claudia sad for putting the woman and I in this position. It didn't matter. Whatever the facts of the situation between Claudia and the woman, as soon as I explained what happened Claudia exclaimed, "That woman is so crazy!", responding to the criticism of the woman exactly as Dale Carnegie describes. At that point I realized that it wouldn't do any good to push the issue, and a little later I realized that my reasons for wanting to in the first place were ill-founded. I have no interest in hurting Claudia, but I do think that it was an opportunity lost for Claudia to learn something about that kind of responsibility, and I suspect I will get the opportunity to try another tactic.

After working a while at ESG, I came back to a sparkling clean Claudia's room (Claudia's mom convinced a dorm cleaning person to clean the room for pay). The bed was made, the desk was clean, and the carpet was vacuumed. My immediate thought was, "What a wonderful place to get some work done!" I didn't realize how important a clean work space was to making me want to do work.

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