When To Be Stubborn and When Not To Be

I am stubborn.  Anyone who has ever spent time with me will quickly agree.  I'm not as stubborn as I used to be, however.

Sometimes stubborn is a good thing, especially when you stand up for something you feel strongly about.  Recently, in a state-test induced terror or stupor, I'm not sure which, a few of my colleagues came up with the bright idea of making their students do two hours of math each day, instead of one, and just not do science.  I would rather have had a root canal than be one of their students, at least a with a root canal, it's over in one day.  They said it was the only way they could "cover" all of the material before the test of doom.  Then, they reasoned, they would teach just science after the test, to make up for lost time.

Brilliant!  This way, their kids can get bored to comatose levels before the test, and then after the test they can go four months with out doing any math.  Mr. Stubborn took a pass on that one.  I couldn't do that to my students, not even the ones that are often a pain in the neck.

Sometimes it's not good to be stubborn, like when my doctor decided we should increase the dosage of my thyroid medication.  I am still kind of pissed off  at my former doctor in Idaho for not telling me that when he put me on the medication it would be for life, and that I couldn't go off the stuff because my thyroid wouldn't function without it anymore.  Aahh...what's up with that, Doc?

So my new doc informed my that stubbornness was not always a good substitute for knowledge, and that the increased dosage might actually increase my energy level, which has been awfully low the past year-and-a-half.  At that point, a thought was slowly making its way into my battering ram of a skull - one of us has completed med school and one of us just has a random masters degree, and that the one who has the medical degree just might know more about medicine.  So I started on the new dosage, and you know what?  Doc was right. Imagine that.