In class today, I was honestly quite taken aback that we were given 1 hour 15 minutes (including 15 minutes for tea) to read a very short speech on leadership by Parker Palmer. It was only about 20 pages of an A5 sized novel. Maybe less since the font size was rather kind.
There were four questions on the whiteboard referring to the speech. We were supposed to pick out salient points and reflect upon it. It was a good speech. It was peppered with anecdotes and sincere thoughts. It was well written and humorous. I was done in 15 minutes. Not going to sit and twiddle thumbs for the rest of the allocated time. Next to looking sullen and feeling annoyed, I could do myself and everyone else a favor by disappearing. So I hightailed out of the classroom to sort out emails, draft a couple of letters and finalize some details for next week's projects and well, tweet.
When I came back very much later, I couldn't believe that the class had to sit in two groups, spend another hour talking to one another to pick out points in the book and share with everyone else to make a group 'view'. I'm so not the sort to sit down and reflect over it. There must have been at least two others who thought the same way as I did. But they were better students and sat in class throughout. Anyway, I came in at the tail end of that 'group reflection'. I sighed, looked at the group's points and still proposed two new points to put up.
I nearly died.
All my life in school, I was that girl who completed her exam papers in an hour out of two hours allocated or be done in two hours out of a total of three. The only papers I stayed throughout for were Thai papers because I couldn't read or write fast enough. I never ever stayed till the end of any paper in English. NEVER. I still got my As.
So now, I'm not going to slow down at work either. A class is different from an office. An office has a wider space and time. In a class, I expect top-notch thinking and substantial quality content. I'm not going to play nice and wait politely. People should either read faster or process thoughts at a quicker pace. At work, we'll just have to be mindful that we can be quite screwed if we move at the pace of the slowest denominator under circumstances which don't quite allow that.
There were four questions on the whiteboard referring to the speech. We were supposed to pick out salient points and reflect upon it. It was a good speech. It was peppered with anecdotes and sincere thoughts. It was well written and humorous. I was done in 15 minutes. Not going to sit and twiddle thumbs for the rest of the allocated time. Next to looking sullen and feeling annoyed, I could do myself and everyone else a favor by disappearing. So I hightailed out of the classroom to sort out emails, draft a couple of letters and finalize some details for next week's projects and well, tweet.
When I came back very much later, I couldn't believe that the class had to sit in two groups, spend another hour talking to one another to pick out points in the book and share with everyone else to make a group 'view'. I'm so not the sort to sit down and reflect over it. There must have been at least two others who thought the same way as I did. But they were better students and sat in class throughout. Anyway, I came in at the tail end of that 'group reflection'. I sighed, looked at the group's points and still proposed two new points to put up.
I nearly died.
All my life in school, I was that girl who completed her exam papers in an hour out of two hours allocated or be done in two hours out of a total of three. The only papers I stayed throughout for were Thai papers because I couldn't read or write fast enough. I never ever stayed till the end of any paper in English. NEVER. I still got my As.
So now, I'm not going to slow down at work either. A class is different from an office. An office has a wider space and time. In a class, I expect top-notch thinking and substantial quality content. I'm not going to play nice and wait politely. People should either read faster or process thoughts at a quicker pace. At work, we'll just have to be mindful that we can be quite screwed if we move at the pace of the slowest denominator under circumstances which don't quite allow that.
7 comments:
it's not fair. you've always been able to read faster than most people. u finish a novel in 45 minutes while it takes others a good 2 hours.
Like you, I always finish the papers really fast. Unfortunately, I couldn't just leave the class.
Often, I end up falling off my chair sleeping the rest of the exam time and "disturbed" the entire class.
i totally get you. it's quite quite frustrating to sit in class and hear thoughts that haven't been processed. i'm like, move on already! what's worse- a slow professor. that sucks. sometimes, u wish his assistant is facilitating instead.
me too, i just can't stand to be in the exam hall for the complete 2 hours after i finish my paper, mainly because i can't keep on redo my check! i will go crazy! =p
gerbera: practice! practise!
kachunknorge: we were allowed to leave after 45min! lucky! i've handed in blank papers for Math... wieeeeeee.
jazzgal: that too.
elaine: hehe. i hate to check it again and again. i'll just do it properly once, scan it again and that's it.
likewise for me I will just get over and done with for my assignments and exams, rather than spending the rest of my 'precious' time warming the seat or pondering...lol..I couldn't stand my lecturer going through the notes bits by bits, sentence by sentence..half of the class are falling asleep..haha..
mochalatte: i think we all have many horror stories like that to share! only now it might have morphed into indecisive and incompetent bosses. :p
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