Monday, June 16, 2008

The Mental Energy-Time Conservation Co-Efficient

(Day 77) There is a balance to be had in a graduate student's career between reading and writing. Reading is of course necessary for informing our theses, and writing is necessary to get out of our respective institutions degree in hand. Too much reading and the process takes a lifetime, but too much writing results in a theoretically unsound account that is too long to boot. Thus the 'mental energy- time conservation coefficient' needs to be respected if the grad student is not to turn out a professional lifetime student.

The student's reading list grows exponentially. With every decent source I find, I am drawn to their bibliography only to find ten other sources I will then want to read. Read one of those sources and they will have ten more interesting sources in their bibliography, and so on and so fourth until eventually everything leads back to Marx.

...So I started reading Marx.

That being said, I also have to keep the writing train a rollin'. If I start writing such that no one understands me, I'll know I have been reading too much Marx. It's all about that balance.

the 'I'll need one in order to read as much as I'd like' song of the day: Ghostwriter - RJD2

1 comment:

amk said...

Yes! I'm caught up now! I wasn't as far behind as I thought I was, even.
Thanks for the late night pick-me-up. Your blog and this one - http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/ - have inspired me when I became frustrated with my own work. And by inspired I mean helped me procrastinate. And by work I mean procrastinate.
Ahh...all in a hard day's "work"...

Oh, and DO check that link out. I thought of you immediately upon being shown it myself. I'm sure you'll appreciate. : )