Yesterday I told students that because of the weather and poor road conditions, they could stay at home and send in the class activity by email. The weather was quite nasty, and unusual for this area. I thought they’d all stay home.
But they all showed up. The wind chill, the sleet, Friday morning. Yet everybody came. And you know what? I don’t think they came for me, great as I am.
It’s because this is a translation course. Translation kicks you into the deep focus zone like nothing else. And being in the zone feels good. These are young people, and only one is an athlete. They don’t have much experience in the zone. It’s like I’m feeding them drugs in those translation activities. It’s almost unfair.
I have no idea why translation triggers the zone. Maybe these are two areas in the brain that are close together.
Another thing I noticed, working with tables, even the simplest ones that you can draw in MS Word, can kick you into the zone. I draw a lot of tables that I don’t really need because it works. Every test I design for my language courses opens with a table.
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