expergiscere anima

It has been a while indeed. I have been really busy with things offline and facebook has devoured much of my time, reading trivial things and virtual whines. The day usually ends with great resolve that I will spend less time on facebook, spend less time "liking" things of sorts. The other day, I deactivated my facebook account, I have noticed that nothing really changed only that I have more time for offline reality than online "reality". If I have to personally sort posted items and make some statistics, I'd say only 20% are worth one's time. The remaining 80% is just as good as unpolished data. The power of virtual gossip entices almost everyone. 

Happiness is a well deserved siesta on a Sunday. I would like to reflect on the value of work and how it makes an impact to one's self and the society. For being a part-time instructor, I am surprised I have stayed for almost three years now. For people who easily get bored with routinary tasks, three years is already substantial. Teaching is different, the thrill lies in the fact that you never get to measure the teacher's influence until the students mature (or not).  As an  agricultural technician  for more than a year, I get the chance to work with real farmers and somehow grow real crops unlike in farmville where you can harvest what you planted after a few hours. Agriculture is not easy, but it literally and figuratively bears much fruit when one has learned how to adjust with nature and one has learned great lessons from past farm experiences. 

Slowly, slowly. For the past years, I am not surprised when a "long lost" friend suddenly finds a way to contact you and gives you a somehow prophetic message that you can grow rich. Yes! I'm referring to Networking. It all starts with the "get-in-touch" scheme, reviving dead ties and exhausting every available opportunity. Everybody needs a downline. They should make things clear and straightforward. It should sound like: "I'm trying to convince you because I badly need a downline!" Just last week I was talking to some of my friends and told them "There's nothing like good old hardwork." I do not have anything against networking or people becoming rich but they always fail to show during presentations that people who have climbed to the top of the ladder have worked hard. There are no clean shortcuts to becoming rich, I believe it's always rough, one can opt to do things the easy but evil way but it's never sustainable, psychologically or spiritually.

Dormancy with sense. It is not that I have nothing to write that this blog has been inactive, a lot of great things are happening each day, it's always awe one can experience when we see the daily miracles of life. I have my share of daily problems but it does not make sense if I write about them. We're all equal when it comes to the weight we have to carry. I have to agree with what a saint said though not the exact wordings, "It's a great cross when one has no cross at all."

Sensus Communis

Still late. I started the first day of work being late by twenty four minutes and they say, how you start your year will be how your year will be. The government’s bundy clock is quite efficient when it comes to tardiness. I started with twenty four, next day was sixteen minutes, then eight, the last day of the week I was three minutes close to being on time but still late. What is quite interesting is that it only takes about three minutes to go to the office from my place.  Yesterday was Monday, I did resolve the day before that I’ll be on the dot, but eleven minutes waited for me to be late. Today I woke up forty five minutes earlier than usual, but so much for hoping and trying, I arrived two minutes late. Quite close but still late. I hope I’ll arrive on time tomorrow.

Now on to other matters, before our Christmas vacation in the university, my students took their Midterm exam in advance. It’s supposed to be on the 18^th to 20^th of this month but we were ahead of time with our lectures. I checked the papers during the break and I am a bit disappointed with the results. I definitely made the exam easier than the previous ones but it did not show substantial difference compared to giving difficult exams. The exam was analytical, as expected from the nature of economics. Some of the questions were too logical but they did not get the right answer, multiple choice resulting to multiple errors.  It is perhaps because my students did not or they do not really study. I don’t get the idea that they were expecting to pass without even studying. How is that possible? One of my students was even skeptical with her score that we had to go over all the test questions to prove that she deserved what she got. She told me that she studied before the exam and that she does not deserve to fail. I just told her, "Then study harder. That's what you should do for the finals."  There is indeed a big difference between knowing and understanding. Mere knowledge would not suffice, it's simply not what you know but how you understand the concepts--this is what education is all about.

Voltaire was right when he said common sense is not so common. It's clearly becoming a "copy and paste" culture. Thinking is almost optional. We are surrounded with ready information we do not have time to digest them. The information we get from television and the internet may keep us updated but may be a reason for us to become lax. It's also a culture of "Like" and "Statuses" when we try to draw the attention of other people. Even a culture of  "unfriend" or remove from friend's list and "unlike" which is another term for correcting what has been liked earlier but soon realized that it should not have been liked in the first place. These may be simple actions in the virtual world, but they create a big gap as to how people should communicate. Some of my students do not talk at all but they are quite loud online. They don't talk when they're in the offline world but they are noisy online. So the question perhaps is, how often do you use your brain? If you use it everyday, then that's good. If you have not been using it for more than a week now, do something...think perhaps?