Dunder Head Infinity
I don't get that into most TV shows. For me, it's pretty much got to be foodporn or good comedy. Over the years I seem to have narrowed my definition of good comedy to mean caricatures of realistic characters. For instance, I've always liked King of the Hill. Not that I identify personally with any of the characters, but I feel like I've known a lot of them at one point or another. I think I dated Dale in high school, actually.
A year or so ago, I added Scrubs to my TV-watching agenda. Some characters are more realistic than others, and while I don't totally identify with any of them, I often identify with JD's daydream-induced incompetence. For example, his mentor will be giving him some kind of important instructions, and he'll be thinking to himself "Wow, this is great, he's really trusting me with a lot of responsibility. At this rate, I bet we'll go into private practice together. I wonder what we'll call it..." and meanwhile he misses the whole set of instructions. Plot device? No, welcome to my world. This happens at pretty much any meeting with my advisor or anyone else important. It sucks, I hate it. You've probably got great advice for how I can stay focused in these situations, but don't bother, I doubt I'd listen to you anyway.
Most recently, I've watched a few episodes of The Office. Since pretty much everyone on this show is incompetent in some way, and unproductivity is coincidentally the theme of both the show and my dissertation, it seems like the perfect place for me to find a character to identify with. For the first couple of episodes, I think I was trying to use Pam as a role model for myself and my dissertation progress. Sure, she's not particularly productive and can be a bit predictable, even slow at times, but she basically does the right thing, is occasionally thoughtful, and in the end gets the job done, all while managing to stay happy and balanced. Slow and steady wins the race, right? Other times I might try to align myself with Jim, and blame my unproductivity on laziness. Could I get this thing done faster if I just worked harder? Maybe. Could I work harder? I don't know.
Then today (ironically while I had the Office on in the background), I discovered yet another giganto mistake in my code that affects everything I've been doing in the last few weeks. It's fixable, yes, and I plan on fixing it as soon as I get over being furious with myself. Yes, I know mistakes happen, and I've been very patient with myself each time. But after awhile, I'm just starting to feel like a dunderhead. These mistakes invariably happen when I'm taking some sort of shortcut with the code, using some kind of cute programming trick of my own invention. When will I learn? And how many other mistakes are still hiding in there, waiting for me to find them? If I just did the predictable obvious thing (rather than some weird trick to save a few lines of code), I'd save so much time in the long run!
It's like I work so hard trying to make progress, yet each little thing I do inevitably makes things worse than when I started.
It's like I'm......Michael...
A year or so ago, I added Scrubs to my TV-watching agenda. Some characters are more realistic than others, and while I don't totally identify with any of them, I often identify with JD's daydream-induced incompetence. For example, his mentor will be giving him some kind of important instructions, and he'll be thinking to himself "Wow, this is great, he's really trusting me with a lot of responsibility. At this rate, I bet we'll go into private practice together. I wonder what we'll call it..." and meanwhile he misses the whole set of instructions. Plot device? No, welcome to my world. This happens at pretty much any meeting with my advisor or anyone else important. It sucks, I hate it. You've probably got great advice for how I can stay focused in these situations, but don't bother, I doubt I'd listen to you anyway.
Most recently, I've watched a few episodes of The Office. Since pretty much everyone on this show is incompetent in some way, and unproductivity is coincidentally the theme of both the show and my dissertation, it seems like the perfect place for me to find a character to identify with. For the first couple of episodes, I think I was trying to use Pam as a role model for myself and my dissertation progress. Sure, she's not particularly productive and can be a bit predictable, even slow at times, but she basically does the right thing, is occasionally thoughtful, and in the end gets the job done, all while managing to stay happy and balanced. Slow and steady wins the race, right? Other times I might try to align myself with Jim, and blame my unproductivity on laziness. Could I get this thing done faster if I just worked harder? Maybe. Could I work harder? I don't know.
Then today (ironically while I had the Office on in the background), I discovered yet another giganto mistake in my code that affects everything I've been doing in the last few weeks. It's fixable, yes, and I plan on fixing it as soon as I get over being furious with myself. Yes, I know mistakes happen, and I've been very patient with myself each time. But after awhile, I'm just starting to feel like a dunderhead. These mistakes invariably happen when I'm taking some sort of shortcut with the code, using some kind of cute programming trick of my own invention. When will I learn? And how many other mistakes are still hiding in there, waiting for me to find them? If I just did the predictable obvious thing (rather than some weird trick to save a few lines of code), I'd save so much time in the long run!
It's like I work so hard trying to make progress, yet each little thing I do inevitably makes things worse than when I started.
It's like I'm......Michael...