My novice master once said that he felt like I was always "waiting for the other shoe to drop." That is to say that my general expectation was that things would go wrong and end up in disaster.
I guess it's true, in a way, that I have a pessimistic view of the world--but I would protest that it's based on experience. On the positive side, a pessimist is better prepared, both materially and spiritually, for actual crises and disasters when they do arise. This is the attitude that one of my high school friends used to call the theory of the "survival of defeatist."
Today is one of those days. I have to go to school because my "second reader" has promised to have the latter two chapters of my STL thesis marked up with comments and revisions. Everything has already passed through the director. So this is really the last chance for anything to go really wrong with the whole project. Hopefully her corrections will be simple fixings of awkward or overly colloquial constructions, filling out places where I have elided logical steps or committed a non sequitur, etc. and hopefully nothing that demands structural or wholesale revision and re-write.
4 comments:
You sound like my brother, once the proverbial optimist, but increasingly pessimistic over the years (you sort of look like him too). I keep telling him the only thing that is saving him is that St. Francis (who he is named after)is his patron saint, though a pessimistic Francis (or franciscan) is the epitome of contradiction! I hope you will learn that by experience too! :-)
Don't recall if I let you know I've moved my blog to http://fmn2.wordpress.com
Good to hear from you, and thanks for the link. The issues you explain back on your new blog are disturbing indeed.
As far as my life of contradiction, my academic advisor (a Franciscan sister) always tells me that the Franciscan tradition is particularly well-equipped to handle paradox! :)
That sounds logical enough, friar, because we all carry that paradox in us, don't we?
There was a general exodus from blogspot as a result of that news. Several bloggers I know moved to other sites, including St. blogs.
FMN
Good luck with the thesis, Brother.
I moved my blog also.
http://pay37.wordpress.com/
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