Universe: Oh, you're nervous? Let me make it a little easier for you.
Nora: Ah-choo! Aaaaaaa, why can't I breathe? Whaaaaaa!
Me: How is this easier?
Universe: Oh, did I say easier? I meant ridiculously harder.
So, it looks like Nora has a cold. I'm holding out hope that she's actually teething 80 bajillion teeth at once, which is making her stuffed up, and Jake did helpfully point out that she's constantly got her entire hand shoved into her gaping maw. But frankly she's been chewing on her hand for a good year now and all she has to show for it are two measly teeth.
Last night was one of those nights in which she woke up every half hour or hour, crying because she couldn't breathe. My mind raced to various strange things as I sat in bed, unable to fall back asleep, waiting for the next time she would wake up and cry. Jake had mentioned that the Romans actually had plumbed toilets. It got me thinking about diapers. What did people do for diapers in the days before waterproofed material like rubber pants? Did they just use cloth that got wet all the time and had to be immediately changed? Did they use something naturally absorbent like wool? What about oilcloth? That's sort of waterproof, right? When did oilcloth come onto the scene? How did people fasten diapers before pins?
It got me thinking about what a pain everything must have been in the time before you had something as simple as, say, a waterproof raincoat. When you came in from the rain, you couldn't take a hot shower. Instead you'd have to build a fire to warm up. What a pain.
That got me thinking about what people 2,000 years in the future might think about our lives now. If you think about facebook and twitter and blogs and instant messaging and texting, we're in contact with each other all the time. Some people have pretty involved relationships with people they have never even met in the flesh. In the future people will probably have devices in their heads that allow them to constantly access information about everybody and everything instantly. They'll have the option to have everybody else's voices streaming in their heads, 24/7. It'll be a life of constant contact with all of humanity. They'll think back on our lives and wonder at how isolated we were. How did anybody exist without being in touch with everybody else at all times? How alone we must have been!
The hours rambled by and then it was time to get up, and go to work and by the time my class rolled around this evening, I was already done for. I was so tired that I was stupid. Tonight we talked about situated cognition and it involves some ideas that are hard for graduate students to accept. They didn't like the idea that knowledge is contextually bound. I showed them an example of dairy packers in a plant solving problems in ways that were structured by their experiences packing cases of milk. "How is this different from expert novice studies in information processing?", one person asked, kind of belligerently, I thought. "Uh...how is it like the expert novice studies?" His question was a non-sequitur, which are the hardest ones to deal with.
"If situated theorists think that learning is enculturation into a practice, and we need to make classroom practice more authentic, who gets to decide what is authentic?" another asked. "Uh...hmm." I said. That's sort of more of a policy question than a learning theory question. I was too tired, and they were rebelling against the material.
And so it goes, and so it goes. And tonight since I got home Nora has already woken twice, and I hear her waking again. She is very stuffed up, and I'm worried about leaving her, especially if she is sick. If any of my co-authors could present this paper next week I would consider canceling my trip, but none of them are there that day, so I have to do it. I hope that Nora is on the mend by the time I leave, and that Milo doesn't get it (but he will). Selfishly, I hope that I don't get sick, because I've been looking forward to this trip for months. There's nothing like a nasty cold to ruin a good night's sleep, and the highlight of this trip is going to be the sleeping.
I can hear fate laughing as I say this.
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