Recommiting to Stopping Early

While admitting that I am not entirely sure how we can make time for this practice in graduate school, I, nonetheless, am quite taken with Boice’s idea of recording your successes by stopping early. His point essentially is that we need to stop early in order to allow information to sink in or provide a space for reflection. This practice of stopping early can take many forms. Boice gives us the example is a different chapter about including pauses in class or stopping class early so that students will be able to allow information to sink in. However, here, Boice gives us a different angle on this idea. He notes the importance of stopping a project early and using this extra time to reflect on what has been learned. This suggestion, from a most basic level, makes sense, in that which would be gain more from: reading a few extra pages of a book or taking the time to articulate—whether through meditative or written reflection—what you have discovered in your reading? Despite any resistance we might initially have to this practice, Boice seems to win out by presenting us with a quality versus quantity style argument. And, from this perspective, the natural choice seems to be choosing to stop early.

I think we can all see—if not, sympathize with—Boice’s point here. However, with the added stresses of papers, teaching, emails, office hours and more, we let this space for reflection pass by the wayside. But, perhaps, we need to reassert or rededicate ourselves to stopping early. I am thinking ahead here, in that Boice seems particularly useful in terms of comprehensive exams. During this period, we have large spans of time to read in preparation for exams. Book after book that on the day of the exam we should presumable be readily be able to justify its meaning and purpose. Boice thus seems useful for this project, in that in order to truly digest all of this information we will need to “record our success;” we will need to reflect on what this text mean and how they relate to our ongoing projects before moving on to the next book. In other words, we will always need to be looking to stop early.