The Court Street Corner
Justin D. Meyer

"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." David Dunham

Efficient, adj.: being effective without wasting time, effort, or expense. Oh the potential for abuse…

Until a decade or so ago, there was only one "school", and pretty much every student was considered an "engineer", correctly or incorrectly. This stemmed from the common curriculum which has evolved since the early 1990's. (You will have to excuse my glossing over the details here.) Be that as it may, the students who attend Stevens, in whichever school, are on the brighter side of the population's intelligence curve, though we do have our moments.

Efficiency and accuracy are the engineer's friend. Unfortunately, lack of foresight and consideration are far easier to demonstrate and pursue. The three most common forms of inefficiency observed around our campus are inconsideration for others, improper/lack of use of resources, and improper multi-tasking. The most disappointing part these observations is that the "social normalizing" and broadening that occurs at college really does not include these little things that do affect others-because few seem to realize it. Some people "get it" on their own, and the rest continue blithely through Stevens, none the wiser for their time here.

On a personal note, one of my biggest pet peeves-an example of inconsideration for others-is when people stop right in the flow of traffic. Be it in or outside a doorway, in the middle of a sidewalk, or in the middle of an intersection. This kind of inconsideration can be infuriating. People who stop short in front of me currently receive a "please don't stop short in front of other people." They should "check their mirrors" before stopping. A moment's thought and a few extra steps would bring them out of the way and let 20 people out behind them, instead of creating a bottle-neck. I am thinking of upgrading from my polite comment to a bump-so they do the work of slowing me down. I'm pretty resilient.

Fitting in between inconsideration for others and lack of resource use is an example which is sometimes understandable and sometimes not. The Samuel C. Williams Library has made a significant transition over the past ten to fifteen years with its meager allotted resources and the high expectations to which it is held. (A more detailed explanation may make a future column.) A major part of this has been achieved with the acquisition of on-line journals and electronic full text article delivery. So we have internet "savvy" students and others who manage their way through a few years without setting foot in the library, but when it comes time to run a literature search for a large project, barely a token effort is made before a call for help is made. The library staff is working on combating this in several ways, but it is difficult not to laugh/cry/rebuke when users are shown or told what they needed was only a click or so further than their token effort.

Non-utilization of resources is another prevalent efficiency issue. Many times people will not make a little extra effort to either not create an issue or to fix it themselves. Take, for example, many smokers. The areas outside many residence halls and academic buildings are littered with cigarette butts because most smokers are too darn lazy to use the various nearby receptacles provided for them. (It is so prevalent I have given up on asking people to pick up after themselves. How can I ask students to do so when so many other members of our community are part of the problem?) Other people walk right by/over litter without so much as a thought to picking it up. I have heard more than a few people complain about trash on campus when I have observed them either tossing a butt out or stepping over trash later. Yes it is windy on the river, but I believe that if every student (and all others, too) picked up only 1 piece of litter each morning on campus, the campus would be spotless pretty much all day, every day.

Physical resources are also used ineffectively sometimes. One of the most confusing is the non-use of double doors to buildings and offices. What is the purpose of having double doors to access buildings or offices-especially those with high traffic-when one of the doors is always kept locked? Is that extra door there only to allow furniture to be moved in and out with greater ease? This was a problem for several months (and occasionally rears up every so often) with the south entrance of the Howe Center. Despite bringing specific instances to people's attention, the second doors are preserved for later use. I cannot fathom why both doors would ever not be unlocked.

People over-commit themselves pretty regularly-one can see it in the stressful schedules we create for ourselves. Multitasking is one way to reduce stress by doubling-up jobs which are not too intellectually taxing. I rarely watch TV or a movie without friends, folding laundry, proofreading, scanning photos … you get the idea. A lot of time can be saved in this respect, in addition to lower-priority tasks getting done "in the cracks" of one's schedule. Unfortunately, however, multi-tasking does not work for the higher-level (intellectually speaking) tasks. In fact, several studies have shown that switching between even one more high-level task and other low-level task(s) is actually detrimental to productivity. Toss in another high-level task and productivity/quality plummets. Not being an expert in this area, I can only surmise that the "overhead" associated with switching or maintaining more than one task, frame of reference, train of thought, brain hemisphere, et cetera, is the main explanation. I have observed this in my own efforts, and in other people's, on several occasions. Driving and talking on the phone are two of these tasks.

It is with significant disappointment that this is most often observed in people talking on a cell phone while driving. The frequency is such that it has become a cliché to explain near-accidents. It must be that the task of balancing or holding the phone puts the combination of driving and talking beyond the processing capabilities of the vast majority of the population. This is probably why hands-free laws were passed. Even these, however, do not spare us from the stupidity of the few who still insist on attempting to juggle all these.

Thankfully, there are some forms of efficiency that are either taught or forced upon us in a college environment. Eliminating repetition of effort is one of them. Professors who espouse teamwork tell us if it is worth doing, it is worth doing right, once. In student organizations, run wholly by volunteers, people learn that if they do not check in with a central point, time and effort is easily wasted. We need to find a far better way to help each other figure out the lessons which are not obvious to so many.

I have received some pretty positive and encouraging feedback from a few administrators, faculty and students. Nothing negative or constructive, yet, but I'd like to encourage those with feedback to email me at jmeyer@stevens.edu.