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I didn’t sleep well last night or the night before, and today after class I apparently seemed so disoriented that a kind person stopped to show me the way out. I hadn’t the heart to tell her that I'd worked there for five years.
(It is, by any standards, a very large and disorienting building.)
It’s a funny thing about routes. To get to my classroom, I have to leave my office building on the west side of the campus, cross the quad, and enter the (large, disorienting) building on the east side.
My first impulse has always been to get outside as quickly as possible. I'd like to think this had to do with my love of the natural world; it might also have to do with establishing easy points of navigation. Equally, it might simply be that I go out the door I came in, even though that door faces west and not east.
Since I'm a creature who works by establishing a habit first, then varying it, I think the last is the most likely.
A couple of terms ago, a colleague and I happened to be leaving the office to teach at the same time. Instead of turning right and going outside, he turned left and went up a long dark staircase. I followed, and we left the building by another door, the east door.
I had to admit to myself that this was a more efficient route. It probably saved a few seconds, which can be precious before an early class, and it kept us out of the weather, should there be any.
Still, my immediate response was "Why would you go *this* way?" Why stay inside the maximum length of time, in a dark, institutional area of the building, rather than go immediately outside into the air and navigate from there?
And yet now I find myself often going out that way -- probably more often than not, though I still think of it as "his way", and I still don't like the depressing aspect of this route.
Despite my conscious preference, some kind of switch flicked in my head and made this the default, "logical" route. I don't know if this is because the route genuinely passed some sort of logic test in my brain, or because I'm so damned biddable, or what, but I'm a little chagrined.
{rf}
(It is, by any standards, a very large and disorienting building.)
It’s a funny thing about routes. To get to my classroom, I have to leave my office building on the west side of the campus, cross the quad, and enter the (large, disorienting) building on the east side.
My first impulse has always been to get outside as quickly as possible. I'd like to think this had to do with my love of the natural world; it might also have to do with establishing easy points of navigation. Equally, it might simply be that I go out the door I came in, even though that door faces west and not east.
Since I'm a creature who works by establishing a habit first, then varying it, I think the last is the most likely.
A couple of terms ago, a colleague and I happened to be leaving the office to teach at the same time. Instead of turning right and going outside, he turned left and went up a long dark staircase. I followed, and we left the building by another door, the east door.
I had to admit to myself that this was a more efficient route. It probably saved a few seconds, which can be precious before an early class, and it kept us out of the weather, should there be any.
Still, my immediate response was "Why would you go *this* way?" Why stay inside the maximum length of time, in a dark, institutional area of the building, rather than go immediately outside into the air and navigate from there?
And yet now I find myself often going out that way -- probably more often than not, though I still think of it as "his way", and I still don't like the depressing aspect of this route.
Despite my conscious preference, some kind of switch flicked in my head and made this the default, "logical" route. I don't know if this is because the route genuinely passed some sort of logic test in my brain, or because I'm so damned biddable, or what, but I'm a little chagrined.
{rf}
