Perception is a funny thing
It's very odd moving from a normal thing to a good thing because all of a sudden the normal thing seems like a bad thing.
My best example of this comes from years ago; before I had seen every episode of The Simpsons half a dozen times, I used to watch it every night on Sky One. It used to be just one episode a night at 7 o'clock which my brother, my sister and I would watch on our old TV. At some point they switched to two episodes a night and it was the coolest thing ever.
Then, all of a sudden, it was back to one episode a night. It was exactly the same as it had been probably no more than a few months beforehand but it was terrible. It was just a short term thing and The Simpsons is really the only thing worth watching on Sky One these days, as they regularly show four episodes a night.
In the grand scheme of things and even in the far smaller scheme of my life, it was an insignificant blip but the strange idea that something, once perfectly adequate, could be bad once something better had been tried stuck with me.
I bring this up because I noticed a funny thing about my school timetable today. I had Computing first lesson in the morning and then three periods off (which would have been far more enjoyable if my DS hadn't run out of batteries during the first of them) and then, after lunch, a period of Maths and a period of Physics. Just a couple of weeks ago, I wouldn't have minded all that much. Sure, I wouldn't have wanted to do Maths and Physics to any great extent, but it was a Friday afternoon; I wouldn't have wanted to do anything.
And yet, what was previously just “Friday afternoon” looked like a huge inconvenience to me, for reasons I couldn't quite fathom. I'm sure I'll get used to it but I get the distinct impression that once the old Sixth year get their lazy asses out of the Common Room and we get access to it and the chance to play Mario Kart between lessons, I'll wonder, as I hurry down the stairs with two textbooks and a pen weighing down my bag, how on Earth I ever survived S5.
My best example of this comes from years ago; before I had seen every episode of The Simpsons half a dozen times, I used to watch it every night on Sky One. It used to be just one episode a night at 7 o'clock which my brother, my sister and I would watch on our old TV. At some point they switched to two episodes a night and it was the coolest thing ever.
Then, all of a sudden, it was back to one episode a night. It was exactly the same as it had been probably no more than a few months beforehand but it was terrible. It was just a short term thing and The Simpsons is really the only thing worth watching on Sky One these days, as they regularly show four episodes a night.
In the grand scheme of things and even in the far smaller scheme of my life, it was an insignificant blip but the strange idea that something, once perfectly adequate, could be bad once something better had been tried stuck with me.
I bring this up because I noticed a funny thing about my school timetable today. I had Computing first lesson in the morning and then three periods off (which would have been far more enjoyable if my DS hadn't run out of batteries during the first of them) and then, after lunch, a period of Maths and a period of Physics. Just a couple of weeks ago, I wouldn't have minded all that much. Sure, I wouldn't have wanted to do Maths and Physics to any great extent, but it was a Friday afternoon; I wouldn't have wanted to do anything.
And yet, what was previously just “Friday afternoon” looked like a huge inconvenience to me, for reasons I couldn't quite fathom. I'm sure I'll get used to it but I get the distinct impression that once the old Sixth year get their lazy asses out of the Common Room and we get access to it and the chance to play Mario Kart between lessons, I'll wonder, as I hurry down the stairs with two textbooks and a pen weighing down my bag, how on Earth I ever survived S5.
posted by Alasdair Corbett at
10:50 PM
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