Getting back in shape is a tough thing to do.
After being sidelined for over a month with a toe injury, I’ve been starting to exercise again. I tried playing a pick-up basketball game and it was exhausting. Halfway through the first game, I was already gasping for air and even feeling slightly nauseous. At the end of last semester when I was in shape, I was regularly playing three or four games in a row. It feels bad being unable to run for long periods of time without getting exhausted. I loved my cross country days in high school.
The hardest past in working your way back to being in shape is probably the initial commitment. After a while of no exercise, it’s hard to muster up the motivation to exert effort again. And it doesn’t help that the first few workouts feel terrible. Fight through those, and soon you’ll be on your way.
It’s a slow and gradual process, but once you crest that hill, it feels so good to be back in shape.
Being the interviewer feels different from being the interviewee, but both positions feel equally tough. Over the last few days, I’ve been interviewing prospective members for my committee and it’s been a good experience. I’ve never done it before and it’s actually harder than I thought.
Many times before, I’ve been in the opposite position and always felt that it was an easy job for the interviewer, since I believed that all the pressure was on me, the applicant. But after doing it myself, I’ve found that there is pressure on the interviewer as well- to ask good questions and find out certain pieces of information. As the interviewer, questions are tough to come up with because I don’t want to make the other person feel uncomfortable, but at the same time, I need to figure out if he or she is a good fit for my committee. The need to prepare for an interviews definitely goes both ways.
From my standpoint, I want to hear an honest representation of the applicant’s personality, experience, and energy, but it’s hard when most people tend to follow the prototypical “interview script.” It’s also tough to differentiate and choose only a select few when you have a bunch of qualified applicants, each with his or her own great qualities.
Whenever I’m walking to classes or anywhere, I always tend to walk pretty fast. I guess it’s because I feel like walking between places is kind of a waste of time. My goal is to get from point A to point B, and taking a leisure pace would just take away from time that I could use to do something more productive or fun.
I do appreciate a nice leisurely walk once in a while though.
What do you think? Do you like to take your time when you walk to classes and elsewhere?
Do you remember your days as a toddler? Whenever I watch the faces of babies and toddlers, I always see a look of curious wonder and glazed over eyes. It’s amazing really, to sit and watch a baby take in the world. They stare out in amazement and almost everything they see, smell, feel, taste, and hear is completely new to them. Oh, how exciting it must be to be a little kid. I don’t really remember much from my days as a toddler, but it sure would be interesting to re-live them.
It’s weird how, as we grow older, we seek more and more knowledge. It’s almost like we all have an unconscious, natural desire to understand everything in the world around us. But as we learn more and more, there becomes less and less unknown and mystery. Perhaps it is the feeling of discovery that continues to drive us to try to understand. Just as we discovered so many new and amazing things as a toddler, we seek to discover many more.
Never stop wondering.