DILIGENCE
"I could never have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time."
Charles Dickens
It was stimulating, invigorating, at times even fascinating, the way the wealth of ideas at the conference on geopolitics charged particles, changed the air. This was Anne thinking. She was thirty but often felt thirteen.She thought in bright kaleidoscope swirls ( tiny pink and purple bits came together just so, she shook them, and there they were again ). She was working towards finishing her PhD.
It was only the second time she had presented a paper and she was nervous, less so than she could have been thanks to tranquilizers, but her hands were damp and her breath was short.
Coincidentally, her boyfriend, Michael, who was also an academic, ten years older than she was, was presenting a paper that same weekend, but on the other side of the continent, on the west coast. He already had a reputation and had been offered a position at an Ivy League university. Those on juries considered him brilliant. Anne liked to think of ivy as a plant.
She had learned a great deal about assiduousness from Michael. It was hard work and, in particular, a single minded...
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