[Rescued from my old blog.]
Well, here I am in the sickly, wee hours of the pre-dawn, wishing I was asleep but too hyped with stress (or caffeine) to go to bed. I’m speaking at the big state conference in just a few days, so I’m down to crunch time: tweaking explanations, adding transitions, printing out overheads, and still trying to cram in an extra topic or two.
I think I try to pack these workshops way too full of information. The un-written rule for speakers is supposed to be KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!), isn’t it? I should know that I can’t teach everything I know about a topic in a one-hour workshop, but I find myself thinking, “Oh, I almost forgot about this. They’ll need to know that; it’s important. I wonder where I can fit it in?”
I guess this puts me squarely in the “stupid” category.
It wouldn’t be so bad if I was satisfied to do the workshops using my notes from last time. But no, I’ve got to tinker. Naturally. And it wouldn’t be so bad if I had decided to tinker just a little around the edges. But no, I’m totally rewriting five of the six workshops, from scratch, all at the same time, with the deadline looming. Aaargh! Why do I have to be such a perfectionist?
At least there’s one positive thing. I learned from a homeschool forum that coffee is good for one’s asthma—and it seems to be true. I haven’t remembered to take any of my asthma medicine for a couple of weeks, since I started the final stretch of editing, but I haven’t missed it at all.
Now, can someone tell me what to use for my caffeine headache when I finally finish the last printout, quit drinking coffee by the potful, and try to go back to a normal life?
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 