Playing a Fear Game

Kim, a student in Perth, Australia, is having a having a bit of banter with her physics teacher in class.

From her blog Scotchkey:

"kim: Well, Mr. L. You see, I have this deficiency complex too. When I'm writing up my labs, I have a fear of writing too much because if I use up all my ink, what's going to happen then? *MrL has previously made comments about the brief-ness of my answers*"

MrL says that this would be to the detriment of her marks.


My point in posting this item: some of our hesitations are just as silly as avoiding writing because we might run out of ink.

I have even had the occasional twinge of actual guilt that I was using up so much pencil lead by doodling that produced no timeless art. This is sick! At least it's no excuse in the wealthy world of bloggers: in Varanasi researching Sister India, I knew an engineer who'd done his math homework as a kid on the margins of old newspapers. That was all the paper he had. That's not the kind of trouble that anyone who reads this is wrestling with.

I have plenty of pencil lead. And Kim can most likely get hold of all the ink she wants.

All we need is to stop making silly excuses and leap into our lab reports, our novels, our Sistine ceilings...



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