I finished with the development of a new class about six
weeks ago, before I went on vacation. So
it had been sitting on the shelf for that long before I finally was able to
pull it off and teach it this week. Boy,
lesson learned; although I did review it a few times in the past week, it still
felt foreign at certain points. It
definitively had its rough edges. The reviews
were kind, but I am my harshest critic, I can do better. I asked them shred me, to be brutally honest,
but they were too nice.
Fascinating isn’t it, we live in a strange society where if
you want critique and ask for it you can barely get it. Really, I thought it was not that polished
and flowing well. On the other hand we
have a person at the helm of this country who will try to squash you like a bug
if you give him the slightest little bit of critique. You’ll be at the mercy of what his little
fingers can type out in his twitter account.
It is such a strange world out there.
I am not that way; I really would like to learn from my mistakes and screw
ups; although I am far from perfect (although I
may come over as too arrogant in one or two of my posts).
This week I received a survey from the National Science
Foundation that was sent to people with Ph.D.’s (I wonder under what rock they
found me). One of the questions was
interesting. It asked me what was
important in my job (I am paraphrasing here); was it:
- Money
- Benefits
- Freedom
- Research
- Teaching
- Perceived contribution to society
I needed to say yes or no.
Well, the state does not pay much of anything, so that wasn’t it, I do
not do research, so we can scratch that one as well.
So I choose the remaining ones. But
after I had to rank them, and there came the rub, to me it still is my
perceived contribution to society.
A few weeks ago I was part of a meeting/survey that was
conducted by the Virginia Institute for Marine Science on their service to
local communities. People that were
asked to attend were all (volunteer) members of local boards that deal with
wetlands and coastal issues. The first
question there was: “Why do you volunteer.”
My simple answer was: “To give back to the community that is willing to
put up with me.”
There you have it. It
reminds of those cliffs full of gannets, murres or puffins that we saw in Newfoundland, and the
story of the people from (coastal) communities in Newfoundland that pulled sailors from ships that hit those rocks and took care of them.
In my previous post I spoke about two of them, but another example is
the S.S.
Ethie. This ship perished December
11, 1919 and here again, the kind people that lived along the shore helped to
save the crew and passengers (including a baby) and took care of them once they were on shore.
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| Remnants of the SS. Ethie that shipwrecked in 1919. |
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