One of the peculiarities of the campus where I work at the moment, is that it is in the middle of nowhere. Beautiful grounds, nice people, surrounded by tiny villages, or as a friend called them, groups of houses of very wealthy and most of the time elderly people. So, not much goes on here outside our comfy offices. This has one good thing, our productivity is super high, specially mine since I'm prone to daydreaming and staring at walls or anything else stareble. But there is a point when just enjoying nature, the rabbits hopping around, and wondering if we will die if we eat the mushrooms that sprouted next to the building door is not enough.
Doing science is a creative process that is quite temperamental, very much like doing any form of art. I am convinced that there must be a muse for the sciences as there is one for music, poetry or astronomy. As a matter of fact my other blog (Confesiones de Narcissus) came into being because I was fighting off writers block. So I needed to write something, anything. This is when distractions become necessary, and living in the middle of nowhere becomes a liability.
I don´t know what motivated it, I suppose certain boredom with a specific research topic from one of my office-mates, but a intra-lab squash tournament was organised. A few of us did play squash regularly, others, like me, have never even been in a squash court, but we entered nonetheless. The outcome was completely unexpected. Everyone got squash head from day one and we all are really committed to it. We are even thinking of carrying on with playing squash every week and even having a campus tournament. It was like we were injected with some new found enthusiasm, that not only got us very active physically, but socially and at least in my case, intellectually.
This squash revolution only proves what has been suggested previously by some people, that happy workers are better workers. And fights the notion of having to be warming up the chair for 8 hours straight to get your job done. Sadly, I know some cases in the scientific community where grad students and postdocs are still expected to do chair-hours and can only leave after the boss, as if they were bureaucrats. Maybe it's just me and my overly active, curious and borderline ADD mind, but art or good science cannot be forced, and playing squash is a good way to help things flow naturally.
