neurological dryer lint

so renee and i had an interesting discussion today. first, some background.

renee has this thing about doing work/homework/lesson plans: she takes her time. it's mostly because she's a perfectionist, to a degree most mortals cannot fathom. to make sure she's hit every angle and learned every fact she can learn and covered all possible ground, she is thorough with her work / studying / planning. this can mean writing out notes in an organized fashion, on graph paper; doing every practice problem - ones that aren't required - in a book; and so on. there is absolutely nothing wrong with this practice, mind you - she's far smarter and a better student than me, and her grades throughout school reflect this.

it becomes a problem, though, when you're trying to get a master's degree; teach subjects you aren't familiar with at a brand new school with new kids every three months, given absolutely no support and expected to prevent any kids from failing; and working a second job. and planning a wedding. a certain degree of academic diligence must be sacrified, so one can, you know, survive the process. i'd like to marry a sane woman who isn't diagramming molecular structures and outlining the history of vocational education in europe in her sleep.

she's been struggling a lot with that lately - getting anywhere near enough sleep (when she doesn't sleep she gets sick), eating enough, and trying to get all this work done. it's a terribly large workload, to be sure. i'm trying to show her some shortcuts, because i'm a slacker who has cut corners his whole life and skidded by with the absolute least amount of work necessary. another way we're polar opposites. she's up late every night doing lesson plans and studying for her classes and working on papers and stuff... and she's always stressed out and overwhelmed. she's running close to - or over - redline pretty much all the time. it's far from healthy. i'm also feeling incredibly helpless, partly because there's no way to diminish the workload - but also partly because she doesn't want to be less of a perfectionist, even though she knows it's really unnecessary and she's sacrificing a whole lot to be able to maintain that level.

so. we come to today. one of my suggestions was to take a day off of work to catch up on things, namely sleep, but also work. naturally it was dismissed immediately - but she brought it back up today, considering it. she was struggling with the idea of using a sick day.

cause she's never called in sick to work. EVER. in any job.

sick days are a danged God-given right as far as i'm concerned. she feels terrible, though, because she's going to miss a day, and let people down. she's not really 'sick' (call it what you will) and so she'd by lying to them. i see them (as does much of corporate America) as both sick and 'personal' days, though, and explain that it's perfectly alright to miss a day, you know, once. the world won't end. so then we get into how to describe how sick she is. i suggest the stomach bug or the "can't keep anything down" or possibly even some random female thing that she could invent and get away with. she wants to go more docile, the "not feeling well" vagueness that, while lacking commitment and creativity, does leave her several outs.

the funniest thing was her "i can't do it!!" exclamations. i'm marrying someone who can't call in sick. my professional career shines with some of the best sick days in human history. in the end i offered my services to call as the fiancee and relieve her of the burden of the phone call. i got some argument there too - "what if they take it to mean we're living together??" "what if they think you're making an excuse for me?"

we are very, very different. so it was fun today, teaching my future wife how to lie to her employers. i'm very proud.