on a roll

Blogroll.

A couple of years ago I began writing a novel and at this rate, I will never be able to complete it. It made me cringe---it didn't seem to have a plot...it was juvenile and had the makings of what would be a Sweet Valley High reprise. You never know, James Rollins was a veterinarian before he became this incredible sci-fi novelist.

Earlier this morning whilst at a meeting, the topic of waking up in the middle of the night with an active mind was brought up. I used to be creative in those moments---but lately I've been comatosed intermittently. 

Ah yes Shakespeare, to sleep...to sleep perchance to a dream. Aye, there's the rub for in that sleep of death what dreams may come.

Uncontrollable stereotypes

I used to teach and have been as objective as I could in terms of evaluation--which is easy especially since when assessing knowledge of anatomy--a femur is a femur and there's no other interpretation of that. Wrong spelling wrong. A femur is not the same as the humerus. The ilium is not the same as the ileum. I have had colleagues ask essay questions either as bonus items or for the sake of having some subjective control especially if they particularly don't like a student. Let's face it, teachers are humans...hominids...humanoids...from Kingdom Animalia. Anyway, I suppose having whatever is part of my identity making it difficult for me to break all the preconceived notions about my kind. XX chromosome, parental unit, natural sciences, alien Third-worlder...I thought I had no self-esteem left after going through a few peer-reviews, but wow. What I feel now is like the equivalent of that nothingness in between electron orbitals. Then again, I may be a boson. That's not too bad. I exist--that's a good thing, right?

flashback, keep the horse blinders off

[Feel free to aim your super soaker on me via your monitor---it's your computer.]

I was in graduate class today and my prof mentioned John Godfrey Saxe's "The Blind Men and the Elephant" which I mentioned in 2007 when I was ranting about how people with specializations tend to snub other fields of specialization.  Someone once told me that when he was doing his thesis about this specific method for data analysis, it was as if he had a hammer and everything was a nail.  I get that.  Each time I was studying a disease, I thought everyone had it---I had it, whether encephalopathy, worms, flesh-eating bacteria, delusory parasitosis, etc.

Let this post be a reminder that we need to zoom out and get out of whatever specialized ivory tower we live in and contaminate ourselves with other equally interesting (or more interesting) fields of knowledge.