Leaving a Mark

For the last few months (more?), I've been taking a bit of a break. Which seems ludicrous, since I've only made a few posts here, but I needed it all the same. Now that a rather raucous and sudden thunderstorm cropped up outside, I am stuck in my apartment and got the motivation to write here again.

I recently (read: about two months ago) finished a longstanding thesis project for my undergraduate degree in an 18 hour marathon the night before the document had to be submitted. It was something that dragged out forever over my senior year of undergrad, and that I am so glad to be done with. Of course, my pride kicked in and won out with the procrastination. That's usually how these kind of things go. Wait, wait, wait, realize I'm going to be the crazy laughingstock who can't finish anything, and then finish it in an extremely short amount of time. For a 48 pg. document, 18 hours was quite a short amount of time.

Now, I am desperately searching for a job, something probably most people from my graduating class (and many other recent college-grads) are doing as well. Grad school didn't work out; I didn't apply to enough schools not in the top 40 in my field. With my small, private university degree, the schools I applied to were probably scratching their heads. While my curriculum vitae is more than adequate, the degree sure isn't Princeton.

I'm crossing fingers here with a job I recently interviewed for at a prestigious research lab. My dad's take on the situation?

Dad: "Do you want this?"
Me: "YES! I mean, of course I do. I would love to work there."
Dad: "Then it will happen."
Me: :eyeroll:

That was about a month before the interview, when I was still visiting family and the boyfriend in various other states. But sometimes, the people you love do give good advice. Like on my commute up to this interview, my best friend from childhood texted me "Just be yourself." And it was perfect, like a whole new epiphany. Just be yourself is a concept that is foreign during interviews and anything academic-y. Especially for a high-self monitoring person like myself.  I thought, "what the heck, I might as well give it a shot." I went in with minimal preparation for an all day interview with almost 15 or so different people, and aced it, according to some words floating around. All that I did was answer honestly--and--I gave them passion.

I've had very little passion since I lost my dream of becoming a professional musician. Most people who know me don't realize how much of an impact on my self-esteem and well-being this had when I was a teenager. I was forced to moved, parents divorced, and dreams fell to the wayside in the wake of Major Depression.

But here is a shiny, new dream presenting itself to me. Not one that necessarily involves this job, but in which it would be extremely helpful. To get a degree in neuroscience after taking more math and science (or getting into this job), and to eventually bring back the kind of neuro tech and rigor to my undergraduate alma mater that would help psych students who, much like myself, will face a tough time showing their degree is worth it. Because of a science and mathematics project that will likely begin in the next 3-5 years at my alma mater with children, it couldn't be better timing (well, my plan would work out in 10 years or so). When that becomes a large success, I can plan on pushing for more, not just for younger students visiting the school, but also for the actual university students. And this is what I would be willing to work toward, this goal. For 10 years. I haven't felt like this since I was a kid. Elated, excited, ready to begin, ready to work hard.

"[She/He] who has a why can endure any how."
((F. Nietzsche))


And I am wholly excited to have this reason to endure the hard work, to keep trying even when I want so badly to give up. But avoiding fear/pain isn't my primary goal anymore. Doing what I love and leaving a mark on this world in a positive way is.

Integrity & Standards: Thoughts on Perfectionism

Today I did something that can be very difficult for some of us: I asked for help.

I've had it in my head all along that because I can't procrastinate on my honors thesis, I can't accomplish it. Procrastination is one tried and true way to avoid the fear of not meeting your own standards, as well as the scariness of getting lost in the details of a project (or re-starting it over and over to perfect it). Perfectionism dictates that all must be correct and therefore good. A moral judgment you make on yourself.

And yes, procrastination can take away all that scary time in which you normally berate yourself for not being able to figure out how to do something or figure out how to do it "correctly."

But it can also leave you with a strong sense of self-doubt and self-loathing, too. If you procrastinate to make yourself rush to get things done, thereby eliminating the ability to abide by your standards, you can start to feel like crap about the work you do accomplish, and wonder if you're really capable of producing anything that is good. 

So...I walked into my advisor's office under the premise of talking to her about a presentation, and then I sit down and dropped the "bomb."

 "So I was afraid to talk to you about this..." My advisor chuckles and says "good!" I laugh a little bit, because I've started our meetings this way a few times before. It's like the code word for I'm freaking out about stuff right now and I really need you to listen and be understanding. I'm lucky enough to have an advisor who totally gets that.

So I tell her what's going on, with the gut-wrenching anxiety I've been having when faced with attempting the writing of my thesis paper and the subsequent melt-downs into tears, over-exercising, or frantically calling my boyfriend to get him to calm me down (gotta love him for being so tolerant).

She's surprised, because she took it for granted that 1. I could come talk to her and 2. that I saw myself as competent and capable of writing a paper. I tell her, no, I secretly suspect she's going to lambast me for needing help everytime I need it, so I absolutely do NOT ask her for help. I tell her that every time I write something for her or produce research materials, I have to "re-prove" my ability to her. She gets what I'm saying, and she just says, "You proved yourself two years ago in whatever class you first had with me, with the first paper. It was your thinking and writing skills I saw within it." I am surprised. My self-worth is not precarious and waiting to be destroyed by my next paper? She has a positive view of me? Shock.

She goes on to say, "There are two things that make you a good writer and a good person. First, you have standards. You produce quality work according to those standards, and you typically have a good understanding of the material you encounter.  The second is that you have integrity. You don't cut corners in your writing, you don't plagarize. A lot of students have one of these qualities and not the other, both of which is a shame. Integrity without standards leads to bad writing, and standards without integrity leads to cheating and shortcuts. But, you have both of these qualities, and that is what makes you a good writer."

And like a good personality/social psychologist, she continues, "These are not just things that change easily. This is a trait that you have. It tends to remain consistent. It's not going to just disappear."

She apologized a little bit for not giving more positive feedback in the past (since I admitted to being somewhat questioning of her regard of me as a writer and student), and said that part of the problem was her mentoring/teaching style; if everything is great, there's no comments. She doesn't pull punches or put stickers on your tests. Doing well is a norm to her. She has standards herself.

The whole thing got me thinking about how I approach my writing, my homework, my classes. What if there is something that I've ALREADY proved? What if simply showing up, thinking about things, and getting shit done is enough? And if I'm doing this on a consistent basis, why should every paper be just another challenge to assert my self-worth to others, and most especially myself?

It reminds me a lot about talk about the worth of a person as something that is inherent, a quality of a human being, that cannot be taken away. While I won't deny that there is an element of showing up and doing the work required beyond that of just having ability, what if this is a trait that I have and not something I need to re-prove every single day of my life? 

My shaky student-esteem has been given somewhat of a support and much needed rest today. Today, I feel like it is enough to just do what I do as myself.

And I want it to be like that more often.

Responsible for Rejection?

 It's times like these you start to feel oddly responsible for random, uncontrollable events. Such is grad school applications.

Did I forget to send something? Did I label everything to the right school? Did I spell something wrong? Did I look like an absolute idiot in my personal statement?

And so on. Every potential mistake becomes a potential rejection, and it can be masochistically fun to play with all the possibilities in your head. I think back to the study we read in my senior capstone class earlier this semester, the one about "tempting fate," and instead of feeling comfortable that fate is just an illusory idea that permeates biased thinking, I pretty much keep trying to figure out what hubris of mine screwed things up.

 Getting rejected from most of your schools is not fun, especially when you do have a stellar CV, publications and good writing/interpersonal skills. Especially when it comes as a surprise like that.

So as I start to consider the possibility of applying to Master's programs and Research Lab Manager positions (how formal sounding), I'm just hoping that something will come through in the "11th hour."

And in the mean time, I should probably finish my undergraduate hon. thesis. Or something.

 I definitely had these nutso dreams about never eating again and how fun that would be. Blech, brain. I woke up still thinking I was a weightless little thing, and promptly ate brunch. While I'm certainly getting better at feeding myself every few hours in adequate amounts, I swear it's more ingrained in me to feed the cat than myself--the first thing I do every morning is feed the cat, and then go to the bathroom...although this is arguably because he tries to take a bathroom break with me if I complete these activities in the opposite order.

It's been 31 days today since I last purged. I certainly feel a lot better. The nasty "chipmunk cheek" swelling disappeared pretty quickly after a week or two, water retention after about a week and a half. Still having some other problems I'm sorting out with a medical doctor/specialist with superfluous amounts of medical testing (because most of these tests come out so clean you would never suspect I was at the brink of a heart attack three years ago).