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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Some Weaknesses

My weaknesses include proofreading and archival research. I find it hard to maintain teaching energy from August to December or January to May. I often make minor mistakes on my syllabus, leaving out a day or scheduling class when there isn't supposed to be any. I am bad at event planning.

Sometimes I jump ahead of myself and develop my ideas intuitively, before I do my research, so my research is often playing catch-up to my writing. I still am not accurate at estimating how long things will take to do, despite my pretentions as a time-management guru. I am both too rigid with time and not rigid enough. In other words, I will sometimes impose rigid but useless scheduling rules for myself, but at the same time fail to follow more basic principles.

I am somewhat egotistical and conceited in some ways, but yet I find it difficult to do the necessary self-promotion. I can be peevish and ill-tempered. I am prone to sloth, envy, greed, pride, gluttony, lust, ire, and pride, not necessarily in that order.

Some of my research pursues issues of interest to almost nobody except myself. I don't know if that's a weakness or not. Self-absorption? I am a master at that.

***

That's only a partial list. The purpose of it is not to tear myself down, but to arrive at a realistic sense of weaknesses I can easily remedy and which are more intractable. Which of them are harmless foibles and which are keeping me back in more significant ways. There should be a third category too, of things that are neither strengths nor weaknesses, things that I can do just good enough, but that I don't really need to improve.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

OK, I've been thinking about this and the strengths too, for purposes of figuring out what I am really like. I might not try to remedy weaknesses, just go to the strengths.

A partial inventory:

My strengths include proofreading and archival research. I find it hard to maintain teaching energy from August to December or January to May, and prefer to teach on quarters. I dislike making the long bureaucratic and legalistic syllabi one does nowadays. I am very good at event planning.

Sometimes I jump ahead of myself and develop my ideas intuitively, before I do my research, so my research is often playing catch-up to my writing. I am good at estimating how long it will take to do things, but I often do not accept my own estimates and make unrealistic plans.

I am confident, not conceited, and I can do self promotion easily, but it bores me. I do not bear grudges, but I do have a quick temper.

Some of my research pursues issues of interest to almost nobody except myself. My actual weakness, though, is also a strength: broad interests. Having to maintain all of these is why I do not get more done. I am the master of the abstract and the proposal (Mars in
Aries, Gemini rising) but not always the finished product although that is actually my deepest nature (Capricorn sun).

So my truest weakness is not the breadth of interest, it is my training to serve others first and put my own interests second. This is why I can be interrupted and tend to choose short projects - things I can get done in between interruptions.

Dr. Purple said...

We are conjoined twins. My weaknesses exactly.