TheBanyanTree: A Lunch Conversation with a Colleague

[A. Christopher Hammon]

My friend sat across the table laughing and enjoying the moment. "So it 
is different now that you are the teacher?" he commented in a voice that 
was somewhere between inquiry and observation. Heads turned at nearby 
tables as my friend roared with laughter, adding to the holiday spirit 
of one of our favorite lunchtime haunts.
 
My friend is the department head for the same department that I teach in 
at another school. He is both my senior and he has been teaching longer 
than I since I held off pursuing my doctorate until I was crossing the 
half century mark. We get together over lunch at least a couple of times 
a month; to talk shop, books, and baseball. And during the baseball 
season we go to a number of ball games together as part of a pair of 
season tickets we share with a couple of other colleagues. The laughter 
is comfortable, warm, and affirming.
 
It was not yet mid-December; about a week after my students final 
revisions had been due and a couple of weeks before the registrar 
expected me to turn in grades. I had just expressed my impatience and 
concern that three-fourths of the class had yet to get their "final" 
drafts submitted. (I teach students working on their doctorates and the 
classes are pass/fail, which in this case is another way of saying it is 
either "A" quality work or failing, and I have the opportunity to keep 
sending papers back for revisions until I am happy with what I have 
received.)
 
"Out of curiosity," my friend across the table asked, "how close to 
on-time were you when you wrote your last papers and dissertation?"

Okay, so maybe I don't exactly have a reputation for turning papers in 
on time and perhaps my friends would suggest that I do have a reputation 
for thinking that submitting  something in a timely fashion is anytime 
within a few weeks of the due date. I'm sure that at sometime during my 
years of formal education I managed to turn at least a couple of papers 
in by their appropriate due dates.
 
My spouse has always accused me of just being a procrastinator and I 
suppose that is true in a sense. But it is not like I just put off 
working on the papers. In fact I was always quick to dive into the 
research and have a tendency to be fascinated by the topics and 
exploring them thoroughly. My therapist gave me a little better 
perception when he pulled out my Myers-Briggs scores and observed that I 
was an off-the-scale "P" with a strong tendency to get lost in the 
process of working on projects. Nothing special, just standard operating 
procedure for those registering as "ENFPs" on the Myers-Briggs scales. 
The problem with enjoying the process of researching, contemplating, and 
theorizing is that eventually you have to put it on paper or some other 
media that crystallizes the process into a permanent form. And the 
moment you do that, the party---the process---is over. All of the 
possible potentialities are immediately frozen into one and a sense of 
falling short of writing the "greatest ever novel" or a Nobel Prize 
winning essay swirls into perceived reality.
 
"Well ... maybe a week or two or three after the actual due dates, but," 
I quickly added, "it was different in my case because I was working with 
a collaborator." Another colleague and I collaborated on our doctoral 
work and presented the school with its first co-authored dissertation; 
so I was hoping to pass the blame off to my collaborator, who is another 
ENFP on the Meyers-Briggs scale. My friend across the table, who knows 
my collaborator, could believe that; but only partially.
 
"I was just curious," he commented.
 
"But the real difference," I added, "was that when I finally got it 
turned it, it was brilliant." We won't say anything about the handful of 
journal articles that several editors are waiting to get from me ... and 
have been for too long.
 
"It is so different now that you are the teacher, eh?" he commented 
laughingly. "And I am sure that when their papers are all in and the 
final versions accepted, you will have drawn out their brilliance as 
well." We both shared in our laughter and turned our conversation to the 
books we were reading through the Christmas season.

Cheers,
Chris


/______________________________
Chris Hammon
Barefoot on the Web
http://barefootontheweb.net/