Exam time

Okay, experiencing a mini crunch here. Quizzes, exams, essays and reports - all due at once. Working my way through it, but it's definitely a workload. It's tough to juggle all the deadlines and get everything done. Well, it would be if I hadn't spent the last 23 years controlling file counts of 150+ and doing it very well. At least I can organize myself.

Just a quick note today. I'm studying for exams tomorrow and Friday so I need to get on with that. I do have a lecture-related bone to pick with some of my fellow students, though: to wit, I do wish you would stop banging your desks and packing up your books when the professor is still talking! It's annoying and disrespectful, and distracting. Besides, I happen to know that most of the time you're not even going to another class, so what's the rush? Afraid we're taking away from your R&R? "Hurry up and finish - I've got to get to Tim Horton's!"

I walked past the library in the dark this morning - the new Taylor Family Digital Library here at U of C. It positively sparkles - it's so modern. I happened to look up to the top floors since it was dark out, and I saw all the beautiful, old books up there, and I thought: "That's the difference in our age. Books are things of beauty - not just what's inside them, but what they are. Our world today is just a shadow of its former self - reduced from warmth, heart and life to cold, hard facts, with cold, hard modern access whether it's needed or not. It's a world of information we just can't handle. Gone is the useful: sacrificed on the altar of convenience and ability. We now do what we do only because we can, not because we need to or should." Everything today is just so convenient, but nobody knows anything about sacrifice."

I sometimes wonder about our species. We're so proud of ourselves. We grow and grow and grow, consuming and massively over-consuming as we go. We measure everything against growth - forgetting that the planet has the ability to sustain only so much of our activity. We will eventually hit the ceiling - it's only a matter of time. All this talk about December 2012 - perhaps the calculations, predictions, soothsaying all stop then because we grow ourselves right out of the equation...

That's it: now back to my studying

J