The other day my father told me: "Listen, you are really excited about the jobs you got, aren´t you?" "Sure," I said. My dad replied: "That´s wonderful, but I think you are far too enthusiastic. You should calm down and be more realistic. Otherwise the first failure will knock you down."
I understand what he is talking about and I know he is right. It did happen to me before. In the past I used to come back home from both teaching and community board meetings exhausted, angry and hopeless. One of the lessons I learned from this experience was to (try to) set reasonable goals for myself to prevent the feelings of frustration. But what is reasonable in this case? On Friday night I talked to my friend Viliam, who is a university teacher at a med school. I told him I wanted to be realistic and hoped that at least a third of my future students would get something from my classes. He smiled and told me: "In my teaching, I follow what I call Steam Engine Theory. Steam engine has only a 11% efficiency. 89% of the energy it produces gets lost. But the 11% changed the world. The one third you are talking about is a very good gas engine. Start with steam engine and see."
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2 comments:
That's a great attitude. I hope you keep steaming along!
Hi, I am glad you are ok after the Seattle attack last week. As always, I am trying to avoid the Israeli topic until I know better what I think. But I will write about it soon because 28 days is a long time already. PS: I keep checking your blog every day.
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