Rhythm and Blues

Most human endeavors fall into some kind of rhythms. Businesses have slow periods and busy periods that are relatively predictable, and there's always some time where you need to set the next year's budget and everyone has to work long hours to completely analyze what everything costs. I remember well my one budget season at my first ad agency. It was two 7AM to 10 PM 7-day weeks, culminating with an all-nighter. My part of the process was analyzing sales data for the top 50 markets in the US (# 50 is Honolulu, FYI, with 375,000 people). I worked my butt off on that analysis and learned absolutely nothing useful. But I was very knowledgable when they asked me questions about Coast Soap's market share in Louisville. And I did all my calculations on a calculator with paper tape (we were still about 5 years pre-PC) and never tore the tape, so I had 2 rolls worth of calculator tape unspooled, covered with weighted averages calculated, completely filling the side of my desk on which I did not sit.

School rhythms revolve around tests. Nobody really likes tests. Students certainly don't, and as far as I know, teachers don't really care for them either. They're extra work and stressful work at that and less fun than actually teaching. But the value of being forced to immerse yourself in something can't be underestimated. I think it's especially true now, when people's attentions are so scattered by the countless distractions. There's no way I can make students integrate a bunch of chapters of material into a coherent whole without forcing them to use all of the material at the same time. Literature essays work the same way- without an assigned paper on an entire book, students would consume it in chunks depending on what's due the next day, rather than thinking about a book as a whole. This by the way, is part of why college is so much better than high school, because you actually have the time to learn things in an integrated fashion. Coming from any elite high school (and especially the one where I teach) this is a marvelous, freeing experience.

Even my paper-tape-filled all-nighter wasn't a complete waste of time. Once I got some sleep, I really did find myself with a better perspective on the business, not to mention a couple of cases of product samples that I gradually snuck out with over those 2 weeks.