Seven Hours Closer to Death

Today was the first day of meetings. Normally, I'm pretty passive about these meetings. I have long since given up hope that something will happen that will forever transform my teaching. I'm usually happy if they say something to keep my interest. Well, I don't know whether I just wasn't in the right mood today, or whether this meeting was particularly bad, but I didn't enjoy it much.

The topic was "Internationalizing the Curriculum." In general, I'm in favor. I think it's great when our students get a chance to study abroad, and I'm in favor of initiatives that let them do that. For those who can't study abroad, we should try to give them opportunities to learn about the world outside our little corner of Wisconsin.

The problem is that there really weren't that many practical ideas for how to do that. Basically, the meeting boiled down to, "We are doing some good stuff, and we should try to do more good stuff." For seven hours.

On the exercise front, I couldn't bring myself to do yoga this morning. It wasn't even being physically tired. I went biking with Rob, and we did a hilly twelve miles, and that was cool. I just didn't have the patience for slow, contemplative exercise. I suppose that if I had done it, it might have helped me to achieve the inner peace necessary to survive the meetings.