The Lazy Route to Success

I just encountered this interesting approach to organization. The basic idea is to achieve more by achieving less. Each day, you identify three and only three things that you'll accomplish the next day. You focus on only those three things, and you get more done than the people who try to do ten things. It sounds crazy, but it might just be crazy enough to work!

Multi-taskers Beware!

I read this article in The Atlantic recently. A comment from a student who is trying to make her way through my online Comp I course for a second time brought it back to my mind. When you're young and energetic, you think you can cram everything possible into the 24 hours a day you've been allotted. You think you can take 20 credit hours, work 30 hours a week, play 4 hours a day of Guitar Hero, and throw in a few other things as well. You think you can text people, eat burritos, and drive your car simultaneously, all the while listening to Dave Matthews and talking to the three other people in the car. I'm sorry to tell you, but you can't. You're not wired to multi-task.
The only way that you can do two things at one time is if you can put one of those things on autopilot. Yeah, you can breathe and play nose-flute at the same time. (Good thing, that!) But you really can't do two things that require your attention. When you attempt to do that, as this article makes clear, you'll either task-switch between the two or do a lousy job of both.
I can play the guitar pretty well. I can sing pretty well. I can't play the guitar and sing at the same time all that well. When I try to do that, one or both of those performances suffers.
So the moral of the story here is simple. As much as you might want to do so, try not to multitask. Focus on the important things of your life. Don't try to write your biology paper while driving to work. Don't try to read your history textbook while texting your Valentine. Otherwise, you'll end up referring to him/her as Teddy Roosevelt. And that won't turn out well.

Benjamin Franklin: Student

In the current issue of The New Yorker, Jill Lepore writes copiously about Benjamin Franklin, mostly focusing on the contradictions in the great man's life. It seems that nineteenth-century Americans took Franklin and tried to make a sort of Solomon out of him, holding up the proverbs and maxims that he placed into the mouth of his fictitious Poor Richard Saunders as an absolute guide for life. "Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise"--that's one of the Poor Richard proverbs that Franklin dropped on us. And who among us, when wanting to sleep just a little bit longer, hasn't hated Franklin for those words.
While I commend the entire article to you, I'd like to make two quite separate points from these words.
First, Lepore points out the general complexity of the life of the mind. Whenever you think you have things all figured out--as apparently those nineteenth-century moralists thought they had Franklin all figured out--you're almost certainly oversimplifying. Life is complex. Any discipline worth studying is complex. When you can discourse on a significant topic, beginning with a phrase like, "It's really quite simple," then I'd suggest that you go back for another look. Life, like Benjamin Franklin's legacy, is rarely quite simple.
Second, and contrary to the thrust of Lepore's article, things don't have to be quite simple to be essentially true. Sure, Benjamin Franklin might have failed to live up to many of his own proverbs, but that does not put the lie to the proverbs or even to Franklin's belief in them. As I write these words, I should be going over to the gym to run a couple of miles. I should do it, but I'm not going to do it. Does that mean that I'm really a hypocrite and a liar when I speak of the importance of physical fitness? Not hardly. It means that I'm a human, frail and imperfect. I'll run on Wednesday.
Do these two points contradict each other? They do and they don't. (How's that for a contradiction about contradiction?) They only contradict each other as much as life always contradicts itself. A successful student will learn that life is not only not as simple as they'd like it to be but that life is not as complex as it might seem to be. The tendency to oversimplification makes us dull and pointless. The tendency to overcomplication leads us to surrender and despair. If you're to accomplish anything academically, you'll need to navigate a course between these two shoals. Easier said than done, but it can be both said and done.

Enhancing Your Performance

I stumbled onto this and couldn't resist sharing it with you. Hey, if this stuff is good enough for Congress, then why not for you?

You can see other cartoons by Bob Gorrell here.

Roe IQ

It's possible that some of you might have wanted to write a paper on abortion at some point in your academic career. I can confess that, as a college freshman, many, many years ago--like almost 30--I wrote a paper on that topic.
Despite trying to discourage people from writing on that topic, I get those papers pretty much every semester, and they're almost always dreadful. Now it's certainly possible to write a good paper either for or against abortion, but people almost always bungle the task. Why? They typically don't have a clue what they're talking about, simply parroting the propaganda that they've gotten from either the American Life League or Planned Parenthood or somesuch organization. Get these writers a little bit off script and their ignorance is exposed. In other words, these writers aren't sharing their own ideas. They're sharing somebody else's ideas through their words. Boring!
Today I stumbled onto this little tool for exposing ignorance on the topic of abortion. It's the Roe IQ Test. The average score is pretty dreadful. Mine was even more dreadful. I'm glad I wasn't taking that test for a grade!

Death Data

How many people died in automotive accidents in Kansas in 2004? 500.
How many of them were female? 180.
How many of those were Black women? 8.
Why should you care? I guess unless you knew some of those people, you probably don't care, but I use these numbers to illustrate a website that you might find valuable while writing about a host of different topics. It's called WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports, 1999 - 2004, a product of the Centers for Disease Control. I'm not sure if they keep the data updating as the years go by, but you can certainly find some recent material that will be useful. Want to know how many male dog bite victims were hospitalized in 2006? (1,642) You can find that in the non-fatal side of the site. In both databases, plug in the type of injury, the state (or whole nation), ages, gender, or any of several other parameters, and you'll get a set of results that can take a so-so paper and make it look like you have access to all sorts of great information. Why? Because you do have access to all sorts of great information. So use it!
Check out WISQARS.

First Day of School

I've been doing the same old boring thing on the first day of class for years. This time, in my Comp I class, I "improved" it a little bit. I used to play the theme song to the old TV show Get Smart as I passed out the syllabus. This time around, I showed a YouTube video of the show's opening. I fully expect my students to point to this as a significant improvement in their educational experience. In the end, though, I wonder if my schtick is not getting schtale. Perhaps I need a new approach.
The following ideas, not original to me I must confess, might give you an idea for some interesting classroom hijinks.

50 Fun Things to Do on the First Day of Class
Smoke a pipe and respond to each point the professor makes by waving it and saying, "Quite right, old bean!"
Wear X-Ray Specs. Every few minutes, ask the professor to focus the overhead projector.
Sit in the front row and spend the lecture filing your teeth into sharp points.
Sit in the front and color in your textbook.
When the professor calls your name in roll, respond "that's my name, don't wear it out!"
Introduce yourself to the class as the "master of the pan flute".
Give the professor a copy of The Watchtower. Ask him where his soul would go if he died tomorrow.
Wear earmuffs. Every few minutes, ask the professor to speak louder.
Leave permanent markers by the dry-erase board.
Squint thoughtfully while giving the professor strange looks. In the middle of lecture, tell him he looks familiar and ask whether he was ever in an episode of Starsky and Hutch.
Ask whether the first chapter will be on the test. If the professor says no, rip the pages out of your textbook.
Become entranced with your first physics lecture, and declare your intention to pursue a career in measurements and units.
Sing your questions.
Speak only in rhymes and hum the Underdog theme.
When the professor calls roll, after each name scream "THAT'S MEEEEE! Oh, no, sorry."
Insist in a Southern drawl that your name really is Wuchen Li. If you actually are Chinese, insist that your name is Vladimir Fernandez O'Reilly.
Page through the textbook scratching each picture and sniffing it.
Wear your pajamas. Pretend not to notice that you've done so.
Hold up a piece of paper that says in large letters "CHECK YOUR FLY".
Inform the class that you are Belgian royalty, and have a friend bang cymbals together whenever your name is spoken.
Stare continually at the professor's crotch. Occasionally lick your lips.
Address the professor as "your excellency".
Sit in the front, sniff suspiciously, and ask the professor if he's been drinking.
Shout "WOW!" after every sentence of the lecture.
Bring a mirror and spend the lecture writing Bible verses on your face.
Ask whether you have to come to class.
Present the professor with a large fruit basket.
Bring a "seeing eye rooster" to class.
Feign an unintelligible accent and repeatedly ask, "Vet ozzle haffen dee henvay?" Become agitated when the professor can't understand you.
Relive your Junior High days by leaving chalk stuffed in the chalkboard erasers.
Watch the professor through binoculars.
Start a "wave" in a large lecture hall.
Ask to introduce your "invisible friend" in the empty seat beside you, and ask for one extra copy of each handout.
When the professor turns on his laser pointer, scream "AAAGH! MY EYES!"
Correct the professor at least ten times on the pronunciation of your name, even it's Smith. Claim that the i is silent.
Sit in the front row reading the professor's graduate thesis and snickering.
As soon as the first bell rings, volunteer to put a problem on the board. Ignore the professor's reply and proceed to do so anyway.
Claim that you wrote the class text book.
Claim to be the teaching assistant. If the real one objects, jump up and scream "IMPOSTOR!"
Spend the lecture blowing kisses to other students.
Every few minutes, take a sheet of notebook paper, write "Signup Sheet #5" at the top, and start passing it around the room.
Stand to ask questions. Bow deeply before taking your seat after the professor answers.
Wear a cape with a big S on it. Inform classmates that the S stands for "stud".
Interrupt every few minutes to ask the professor, "Can you spell that?"
Disassemble your pen. "Accidentally" propel pieces across the room while playing with the spring. Go on furtive expeditions to retrieve the pieces. Repeat.
Wink at the professor every few minutes.
In the middle of lecture, ask your professor whether he believes in ghosts.
Laugh heartily at everything the professor says. Snort when you laugh.
Wear a black hooded cloak to class and ring a bell.
Ask your math professor to pull the roll chart above the blackboard of ancient Greek trade routes down farther because you can't see Macedonia.

When you've tried them all, perhaps it's time to graduate.