derailed
Here's almost verbatim what I said to students yesterday as I was explaining to them how to write an academic paper to be read aloud to an audience:
"You want to provide your readers with a kind of roadmap to help them see how you're getting from point A to point B."
and then I said the word roadmap one more time, which led to this:
"I've been having this recurring dream lately, where I'm running to catch a plane and I barely make it. And I'm always at the Boston airport."
Their faces were dumbstruck. What the hell?
Um, yeah. I just illustrated what not to do when presenting material to an audience. I just assumed that students would be able to follow my train of thought, which was something like: roadmap, transportation, flying, that damn recurring nightmare about missing my plane.
It made complete sense to me.
And this dream, it's disturbing. You all know how I can't stand to be late for anything. And lately I've been feeling this horribly vague anxiety. Don't know what it is or what it's for or what my problem is, but it's making me a bit nuts.
Labels: dreams
posted by aerobil @ 1:08 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
A. Wow--can we call that move a "Schmoozin"?
II. Is the anxiety based on something happening in your life, do you think, or might it just be a chemical reaction? And could it be resolved, or at least improved, by doing something physical? Because, sometimes I spend waaaay too much time trying to figure out the meaning behind the anxiety, only to find there's something wonky with my meds, or my diet, or something.
3. I'm just sayin'.
What do you make of recurring dreams of being rushed to the ER where emergency surgery must be performed. When I wake up I think, "I can't reschedule comps, dammit." Yeah, that's anxiety for me. Welcome to the club.
My best advice, after just coming from a conference where college English graduate students and professors of various ranks were reading papers to an audience, is this:
Read the paper outloud to real people before you take it to the conference. Then REDRAFT it so that it sounds reasonable and fits the time frame.
I have to talk to "my" students every week for two hours - yes it is a small engagement. They look at me like sheep in thunderstorm. I ask them whether I talk to much nonsense and whether they can follow me - they can and now (after three weeks) they start to think, talk and discuss. It is a miracle.
Dreams can be disturbing. One can try to act in them, to form them to get over the terrible "passivness".
mago
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