It happened again. Monday rolled around. When will Science master the ability to predict these cataclysmic disasters? Surely there is some cause that we can treat. Vaccinations, maybe? Monday shelters, buried deep underground? Is there a pesticide that will selectively kill off all Mondays?
Once again, I’ve done it to myself: I set up all the material for my classes for the students on Monday, which effectively means my weekends are shot. This week we’re finishing up The Triple Helix with a conversation about the limitations of reductionism, Wednesday we discuss strategies for answering thorny research problems, and Friday we’re reading a paper about snake ecology, development, and evolution that takes a multidisciplinary approach. I’ve got it all queued up, almost as if I have a plan and know what I’m doing. I’m also tired, bleary-eyed, and I have a headache.
It is all my fault. The easy thing to have done would be to trundle through a series of lectures in which the students sit back with glazed eyes and absorb my wisdom, but instead I’m setting up frameworks and making the students do most of the work, at least two out of three classes. It turns out that’s far more work than just telling them what they need to know, so Mondays are going to be my days of pain.
The rest of the week, though, is cake. Mostly. Then this weekend I have to prep for next week, when we dive into the first chapter of our eco-devo textbook. Plasticity. Plasticity, plasticity, plasticity. That’ll keep us busy for a while.
Also, every day is grading day, and Tuesdays and Friday mornings are my spider days. I’ll recover tomorrow.
That snake paper sounds interesting. Reference?
Dude, you’re the spider wizard. Just selectively breed a subspecies of jumping spider that waits on that little line on the calendar between Sunday and Monday, and when Monday gets there, jumps out paralyzes it, and eats it.
Discarded idea: A giant orb spider that builds a web across the international dateline and traps Monday as it comes along. But that would probably also be a menace to air and ocean navigation, so instead you’ll need a squillion little spiders that can be spread across the globe and catch Monday just before it occurs in each timezone.
You’ve already the answer in front of you. Reductionism. That should’ve spurred a hint on how to lower your workload.
Get rid of the redox environment in the classroom, it’s rife with a nasty toxin and go with a reducing atmosphere, everything else will fall into place. Just remember to keep the lab in a redox environment or your spider work will likely come to a swift conclusion.
Not one soul existing within a reducing atmosphere ever complained about Mondays. Or anything else, for that matter, so obviously they’re happy.
As for the exhausting work of having the students think, hasn’t the GOP taught you yet? One tells those following what to think, not encouraging thinking. That thinking stuff is what messed everything up since Copernicus and his ilk started spoiling things.
The paper is:
Filipe O. Da Silva, Anne-Claire Fabre, Yoland Savriama, Joni Ollonen, Kristin Mahlow, Anthony Herrel, Johannes Müller & Nicolas Di-Poï (2018) The ecological origins of snakes as revealed by skull evolution. Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-02788-3.
Got it. Thanks.