Question: What to do when one has three 20-page research papers due frighteningly soon, a stack of grading taller than the average kindergartener to get back to students, and is rapidly running out of clean socks?
Answer: Write a blog entry.
I really, really miss feeling smart and organized. It was a nice feeling, and I want it back. Back in the good old days of smart and organized Heo Cwaeth, I was convinced that this was unshakeable self-esteem. Ha! The degree to which I based that feeling (when I had it) on the approval of others was really brought home to me last week when the professor who frightens me most, the one who will not speak to or acknowledge students until he's convinced they're not complete dunderheads spoke to me for the first time. (It took twelve weeks to get out of dunderhead-land, that's a bad sign.) I was alarmingly pleased with the tiny little approving nodling that I got from this guy. Part of that probably comes from the fact that I had nightmares and daymares for a week leading up to my presentation in his class that I would give my evidence, make my argument, and he would just look at me and say "No." This didn't happen, of course. I got two whole syllables out of him. And I bragged about those two syllables to a friend, too. It's almost as if convincing this guy that I'm not vapid somehow proves that I really can handle grad school. Now, how sad is that?
2 comments:
I really, really miss feeling smart and organized. It was a nice feeling, and I want it back.
You and me both, sister! This is, in fact, one of the first things grad school tends to take away from us. It's character-building, I guess: I think I definitely am better off for having learned how to fly by the seat of my pants a little. But it sure is painful.
As for Ol' Snooty, try not to let him rattle you too much. Everybody gets at least one Dragon at the Gate (I sure as hell did, and he scared the bejeezus out of me). Usually the bark is a lot worse than the bite.
AW, thanks for the comment. :-) You know, considering this Professor' the Dragon at the Gate'amuses me so much that I'm forgetting to be frightened of him. I'm a medievalist, I can get around a dragon with ease.
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