There used to be a columnist--Sydney Harris--who wrote "What I learned about when going to other things." He meant that (when reading or researching) by scanning and going off on little "tangents"--I'd rather call them "excursions"--new things are learned and new interests and even great passions can be discovered. In academia it sometimes seemed that writing a paper could be the equivalent of a Whitman folder--you simply plugged in an article, in sequence, without much creativity. And I'm not knocking Whitman albums or publish-or-perish articles. By doing these we really learn to enjoy more creative and challenging things. To make things more exciting when almost living in the library--I used to read the Table of Contents in academic journals, usually going back decades. You make connections that others may not have seen. It worked for me, what I wrote got quite a few citations. (sorry, don't know how this came about) I absolutely love going back into the forums. If you tap the arrow quickly, it doesn't take long to get to number 100. I'm in the 200s now. I usually see several topics that pull me in. I hope I get to 2200 or whatever the end is. Then I may go through them again. I always seem to see things I missed the first time around, or based on what I've been doing I want to follow a new path. The material in these forums is phenomenal. Thanks to all.
