I thoroughly enjoyed one of Seth’s posts from a couple of days ago, with the title “Cancelled“:
All those meetings you have tomorrow–they were just cancelled. The boss wants you to do something productive instead.
What would you do with the time? What would you initiate?
If it’s better than those meetings were going to be, why not cancel them?
Well as fate would have it, a situation quite similar to this happened to me just yesterday.
I had just walked all the way across campus for my 10:30 math class and was walking up the steps when one of the other students in the class was coming down the steps and told me that class was cancelled.
So I turned around and headed back to my office, and got there about 10:40. I was scheduled to teach my next class at 11:30, and I thought, ‘I have 45 free minutes to do whatever I want. My first thought was to get a cup of coffee and perhaps just sit back and get caught up on some of the latest news.
But then Seth’s post came rushing into my mind, and I thought that I could find a more productive way to spend those 45 minutes, and I did. I spent the time grading student assignments, and made significant progress. It was a great feeling to have utilized that bonus time to do something productive.
I’m not suggesting that going to my math class would not have been productive, since it always is, but once the class was cancelled I had a choice of essentially enjoying that new found freedom and doing nothing, or making smart use of that time.
My guess is that if I had not read Seth’s blog, I probably would have done nothing.
So thank you once again Seth for your inspiration, I’m sure my students are grateful as well.
Borden's Blather 