A few observations from a busy week on campus:
If I carry a pair of freshly-picked cantaloupes into the library and a human being's nose catches a whiff of the scent, I will not be carrying any cantaloupes when I leave the library, which is a good thing since my resident garden guru has just picked a dozen ripe cantaloupes. They don't keep well, you know? I'm happy to try making some cantaloupe-and-ginger sorbet this weekend, but my experience has been that frozen cantaloupe loses massive amounts of flavor.
If I walk into a meeting expecting a meaningful contribution from someone who has previously demonstrated an unwillingness to contribute anything meaningful or even, often, to show up, then I'm expecting too much. Can't expect a tiger to change its stripes just because I said Pretty-please.
If one person emails to ask politely for the kind of help and training I'm accustomed to providing while another person sends an obnoxious email berating me for not having already provided such help to certain people who never asked, I'm answering the polite email first, every time. Why do some people go straight to the nuclear option? I'm here to help, but don't scream at me for failing to help someone who never asked for my help! After all, I'm only human.
If I'm already having trouble getting to sleep, staying asleep, and keeping alert in the afternoons when we haven't even gotten to the stressful part of the semester yet--you know, the whole teaching two new classes thing--then it's going to be a very long and exhausting semester. I need to develop some better relaxation skills--but I'd better do it quickly before everything gets any crazier than it already is. Hurry up and relax! Nope, that didn't work.
It's always nice to be reminded that human nature continues to be entirely what it has always been: human. Or, as Kermit the Frog learns in Pete's Luncheonette, Peoples is peoples.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
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