Follow up on Swami
As I filled out Swami's questionairre (I'm Canadian. I get to put as many r's and e's and u's in words as I want) I was thinking about how it seems I've got just about everything that I tried for (job, place to live, Mr Bob etc). I mean, I don't live in the place yet and my only contribution to that was telling Mr Bob he would be sad and lonely in Toronto because I wasn't moving there ( I was joking, well, kinda).
So why does it not feel like much at all?
Mr Bob says I suffer from one of the worst cases of "not wanting to be a member of any club that will take me" itis. He's kinda right. I remember in junoir high and high school, there was the Merit roll(good), the Honour roll(better) and the Principals select list(straight A's). I always thought the kids on the Principals select list were utterly brilliant. (I varied between Honour and Merit). In high school I would look at the lists for people I recognised. The Honour and Merit roll had about 50 kids each, while the select list was less than 10.
Then I made it onto the list. But, that didn't count because
a) There were 12 people on the list that time.
b) It was in high school, so we only took 4 classes at a time (so easier to get straight A's)
c) Does an A in Drama really count?
Currently, I have a post doc at a good school but that doesn't count because
a) Even though the university is very high ranked (occasionally listed as #1 in the country), the lab is more important than the university and my boss is not a superstar.
b) Some of my co-workers are not super bright (showing that my boss is not very discriminating)
c) It took me 6 months of unemployment to get a position.
And somehow, those facts overide the facts that some of my coworkers are fucking brilliant, my boss is working in some very cool research and I might be his current favorite post-doc (judging by the amount of work he swamps me with).
I'm not looking for sympathy for my poor state of mind. I know I'm lucky and I also know that I worked fairly hard to get some cool things in my life (if putting up with Mr Bob counts as working-have I discussed his current obsession with oatmeals (with an s just to annoy me))?
It's just that I always feel that "if I can do it, it really isn't that special at all".
So are you special? Do you deserve all the good things you have?
posted by Aislinn Sirk @ 8:51 AM
3 Comments:
Well, I felt very special when I was in high school and alternated between the Honour and the Select lists. (Aside: WTF kind of high school did you go to that only taught 4 classes at a time? WE had to take 7 or 8. One year I took 9 because I really wanted to take German along with Latin and French but my dad would not let me drop stupid Physics.)
I felt special in college (even though my grades were more average there) because I hung out with grad students and professors. (My fellow undergrad college friends barely knew their professors and I got invited to dinner & parties & stuff at the prof's place.)
I felt special when my first child was officially designated as "gifted" (This turned into a curse when she was a young teen, but at the time I felt Special.)
I have always felt special. I just need better luck these days. I had nothing but good luck before I turned 30, and mostly bad luck since then. I figure that my luck is being saved up for something big in the future!
We took 8 classes a year, but only 4 each semester. (Or maybe 5. I don't actually remember). So we had finals in January and in June. It was nice to have the finals seperated like that and helped with early admission to some universities.
I do not feel special. However, I'm eating oatmeal right now.
Post a Comment
<< Home