Last time I talked about the nice and steady scheduling that educational environments provide for their students. Sure, it’s rough sometimes. Sure, there are night classes. Sure, you might be employed somewhere when you’re not literally sitting in a classroom, but the fact is plain to see that traditional education (and by this I mean anything not 24/7 and/or all online) provides a meaningful and predictable framework within which you have something on the educational front to do. (No this doesn’t include homework either… but stay with me for a while). This scheduling sort of mimics the nine to five dream of employment (something I grew up referring to as “banker’s hours”), but anyone who has “worked” while in the traditional educational model knows that there is work to be done before nine in the morning and after five at night.
That said, my shift from working primarily in the late evening and early night hours on my writing (dissertation) to being forced, by my present occupation, to work on them during the morning hours has led to a collapse of the one thing I had for the past 20 or so years of my life: the “banker’s hours” of education followed by the evening hours of writing. This has made a very measurable impact in my productive output. It has been lessened a great deal as I have (as yet) been unable to adapt myself to being fabulously productive in the early morning hours at the task of writing. Like jet lag, this will probably take time. Unlike jet lag, I don’t have a whole culture surrounding me to support my bodies belief that it is now time to be productive (nor do I have the sunshine or moonlight to guide my perception that my body was wrong and the world was right). Time will tell. Hopefully time will also bring change.