I finished my doctoral dissertation last weekend, coming in just under 50,000 words. I am not going to indulge in self-stroking here by talking about what an accomplishment it was or how I finally put the capstone on 25 years of formal education (for the low, low price of $56,000). I do however want to mention that I was really surprised at what happened to me afterwards. I was motivating myself to write by reminding myself about how much fun I could have on the computer once I was done. Guilt free gaming and internet browsing, writing about all the thoughts and topics I want, do some NationStates roleplaying, maybe run through some Photoshop and other program tutorials, I could transfer all the video of the baby and start some post-production, all sorts of stuff.
Oddly, I haven't touched my computer much at all since the final printout. Part of it is that I've spent more time with the baby and I've had to catch up on a lot of uncorrected homework, but even if I had all the free time in the world, I wouldn't want to spend it sitting in front of my computer. I think I got sick of using my computer. I just wasn't interested in sitting in that damned computer chair any longer than I had to. I also have a substantial backlog of paper books I want to read, and they are really appealing right now. So I'm getting back into reading books, a habit I've follen out of in the last few years since I got broadband access.
The internet is a great place, no doubt about it. But it's overwhelming sometimes and I've found that I have a hard time concentrating on one thing. The dissertation didn't help, overloading me with all different threads of theory and ideas that I had to hold in my head. I'm interested in so much stuff that sitting down to read the news easily turns into an all day affair. Tech news, social issues, check the political science publications, then cruise over and hit some message boards for a bit of interactive intelligensia (or not, as the case often is).
It's a lack of discipline, undoubtedly. To really achieve professional status as an internet user, a person has to learn to cut themselves off. There is so much information online that it is pointless to try to take it all in. Failure to focus ends up cutting your knees off at the hip, and I've spent hours reading sites and following links only to come to the conclusioin that there isn't time to read everything I want to so I bookmark it all. I end up spending a long time perusing a bunch of pages but don't invest any quality time to actually read and digest something.
Bookmarking and programs like StickyBrain make it easy to store something for later retrieval. But a consequence of this is that I don't make the effort to actually store it in my brain. One perspective portrays me as a cutting edge adopter of technology who is augmenting his memory with the silicon partner; another says that I'm letting my brain atrophy by not remembering anything and that I'm doing a disservice to myself by not storing it in my own brain. Both of these are right, but I tend to spend more time in the latter train of thought.
I need to get back to basics when it comes to learning. I'm well read and well informed, but my interests have become so wide that my knowledge is superficially retained at best. I have lots of knowledge in my bookmarks and databases, but what good is that when I'm in an online discussion (or GASP! an actual real-life discussion!!!!??!)? I'm always thinking about where to go next and what to read next that I fail to live in the now and take advantage of the effort that got me to where I was.
Okay, this has gone off entirely in the wrong direction (but a good one, in the end) and is getting longer. Expect a revitalization of this space in the coming weeks (I think its the third wave of activity so far). If you like what you read, spread the word too. It's nice having people read and comment on what goes up here.
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Posted by Nutrimentia at December 7, 2003 04:45 PM | TrackBack