A Time of Action
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Well the semester is over. Finally. And I can't say I feel proud of it. Just relieved. This has been the most difficult semester yet. The trouble is not the work there is to be done, but the fact that I have done too much of it thus far. After a while, each additional class actually works against me, rather than for me. It is the academic law of diminishing returns. The longer I study, the less benefit is derived from that study.
I have sat through seminar upon seminar, listened to lecture after lecture, read paper after paper and endured endless, mind-numbing presentations of the kind I was taught never to do. (Here, I refer to making a handout and then reading from it to/at the class.)
Of the papers we are to read as part of the course work, many have been read years ago, many others are based on ones previously encountered. I have heard the same names over and over, learned the same concepts again and again. I have grown weary from reading for readi