The Hour of Discontent

"Discontent is the first necessity of progress."  - Thomas Alva Edison

I hate writing papers with no purpose. I often entertained the idea of assigning them as a professor and always avoided the path to that academic boondoggle. Keeping students busy in the reading and writing of content is, to some, education. But without focus and intentional understanding of the objectives, it's just mindless. I can usually predict the level of "busy-ness" from the instructions. The closer to "write a 3 page, single spaced paper on the topic of your choice" the instructions are, the more mindless the intent of the education. Such was the case for public health. That paper, worth 10% of the final course grade is due tomorrow and the anxiety in the class is present. I'm just pissed, but I have a smile on my face.

However, that discontent had me get on it early and viciously in order to make the progress I needed to make. I turned in mine in almost the 3rd week of class...very early. I jumped on it quickly and completely enjoyed the experience, on my time, at my pace, without the incentive of the due date. So my discontent is more at the process, less about what I needed to do for this assignment. I hate to see the struggling student having to deal with it. It's so useless. But I actually learned something about the Ottawa Conference on Health Promotion and Prevention and it's implications on the current practice of preventive medicine. Unfortunately the value of this study will be my own, totally separate from the experience of the class and lost in many ways. Even as we try to move toward greater prevention in medicine, it gets such short shrift in medical education. Sad really. But mine is done (actually I was the first to be done) and I got something out if it, despite my understanding of the true lack of educational value for most. Even in my discontent, I've made progress.