{"id":697,"date":"2006-10-03T07:28:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-03T07:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2006\/10\/life-grumblings-of-a-grumpy-academicstudent\/"},"modified":"2006-10-03T07:28:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-03T07:28:00","slug":"life-grumblings-of-a-grumpy-academicstudent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2006\/10\/life-grumblings-of-a-grumpy-academicstudent.html","title":{"rendered":"Life: grumblings of a grumpy academic\/student"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>How did it come to this?  Me: overworked, stressed, worn out, tired, etc.  This after just one month of the semester and no break in sight (my winter break will be dominated by frenzied travel, paper writing, grading, and prep for teaching spring semester).  My current schedule has me starting at about 6 or 7 am every day and finishing around 9pm (or 6ish a few times a week).  Some people can handle that, but I\u2019m fairly lazy by nature so this isn\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n<p>I certainly admire those who have energy to put in those long days \u2013 and I\u2019ll work on it.  I\u2019ve picked up some multivitamins, I did my first sitting meditation in a long time tonight, and I made it to the gym.  I\u2019m hoping that these three, along with a continued healthy diet will give me the strength to carry on. <\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m enjoying what I do, for the most part.  I wish I had more time to put into my teaching, which is already consuming 30+ hours\/week with prep and ancillary duties.  But feedback thus far has been positive, and I\u2019ve felt confident in the classroom all along.  Kant classes have been very difficult \u2013 this isn\u2019t the fun Kant of the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals or the Critique or Practical Reason, or even \u201cWhat Is Enlightenment.\u201d  No, this is the ugly Kant of the Critique of Pure reason \u2013 where we study such things as Geometry and Logical Categories.  I have the slightest suspicion that it will all turn out well \u2013 that this work is essential in some way, but for now I don\u2019t have much of a \u2018big picture\u2019 view on things, so it is very difficult.<\/p>\n<p>Epistemology is similar: what is \u2018justified true belief?\u2019 and how does it relate to \u2018knowledge?\u2019  And why should we care?  It all seems to be a misguided quest for certainty in some fashion \u2013 but again, I\u2019m hoping some light will go off in my head and it will all start to fit together soon.<\/p>\n<p>Philosophy of Ecology is good, easier than the other two in terms of readings and philosophical complexity of issues.  The prevailing issues seem to be caught up in dualisms of Nature v. Culture and Humanity v. Wildness v. Naturalness.  All of it seems to lend itself to a good <a href='https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/library\/buddhism' target='_blank'>Buddhist<\/a> reinterpretation, which is what I hope to embark on in the coming weeks (as time provides). <\/p>\n<p>Finally is my work at the Center for Ethics, which is going great.  I only have about 5 hours a week to spend there, but it is a wonderful work environment and the director keeps talking about getting me on board for bigger and longer-lasting projects. <\/p>\n<p>So I can\u2019t say that I dislike <span style=\"font-style: italic\">anything<\/span> that I\u2019m doing, even the extracurricular stuff \u2013 Philosophy Society, Golden Key International Honours Society, the occasional Philosophy Forum and lecture.  But I can say that I wish there were two of me, or that I had the ability to do it all with just 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night.  Multivitamins, meditation, and exercise: perhaps they\u2019re all I need.<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7907151-115985846676264193?l=americanbuddhist.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How did it come to this? Me: overworked, stressed, worn out, tired, etc. This after just one month of the semester and no break in sight (my winter break will be dominated by frenzied travel, paper writing, grading, and prep for teaching spring semester). My current schedule has me starting at about 6 or 7 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Life: grumblings of a grumpy academic\/student<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How did it come to this? 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Me: overworked, stressed, worn out, tired, etc. This after just one month of the semester and no break in sight (my winter break\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2006\/10\/life-grumblings-of-a-grumpy-academicstudent.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"American Buddhist Perspectives\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-10-03T07:28:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7907151-115985846676264193?l=americanbuddhist.blogspot.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Justin Whitaker\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Justin Whitaker\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2006\/10\/life-grumblings-of-a-grumpy-academicstudent.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2006\/10\/life-grumblings-of-a-grumpy-academicstudent.html\",\"name\":\"Life: grumblings of a grumpy academic\/student\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2006-10-03T07:28:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2006-10-03T07:28:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#\/schema\/person\/abfb8f851f671638c4c7536b963f9da9\"},\"description\":\"How did it come to this? 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