Don't ask me how I did it--it's too embarrassing. I was trying to work too quickly on too little sleep right in the middle of my stupidest part of the day when I realized almost instantly that I had accidentally deleted an entire course from our course management system after spending the better part of the day building that course from the ground up.It was a beautiful course while it lasted and it's even more beautiful now that I've rebuilt it from scratch, but for a few hours there it was a vast desolate wasteland. But I was okay with that. In fact, I surveyed that wasteland with an utterly incongruous sense of peace.
For one thing, right now is the right time to do irrevocable damage to courses because no students are here to suffer the consequences and I have plenty of time to sweep the dust under the rug before they return. No need to panic or run around alarming our tech people--just breathe deeply and take some time to figure this out.
Which I did.
Also, for the past few years I've been developing a profound appreciation for futility. Consider: on Monday we packed up all our canoeing gear and hauled the canoe a few miles up the Muskingum, and then we paddled up the river a short distance to the mouth of a pleasant little creek, paddled up the creek until it got too shallow and rocky, and then turned around and paddled right on back to where we'd started. We didn't catch any fish, take any decent photos, or even arrive anywhere significant; by any objective measure of accomplishment, it was an exercise in futility.
But I like futility. Futility is soothing, especially when accompanied by kingfishers. And so when I accidentally and irretrievably deleted my beautifully constructed course, I took a little mental trip up the river and cherished the moment. This is the magic of August: even if I end up in the middle of a vast desolate wasteland, it doesn't have to be the end of the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment