personal epiphany.

"I’m also paranoid because - big reveal here - I was asked to leave graduate school at the first school I was at. In reality, it was because they admitted too large of a class and I was inexperienced at research and really didn’t know what to do, and probably required more guidance at the time than they were willing to give. But for many years, I blamed myself (even after I succeeded at getting a Ph.D. and was the runner-up to “outstanding Ph.D. candidate” at my second school) and told myself I spent too much time reading novels, or out walking, or doing unserious stuff."

(as I said in a comment on another blog)

I mean, that event - which happened, now, almost 15 years ago - was a big shock at the time, because it was so unexpected. No one suggested I was making insufficient progress. (In retrospect, I think some kind of a warning perhaps six or eight months before the actual preliminaries would have been a bit more fair. I don't know if I didn't get it because everyone was too overworked to think of such a thing, or if they didn't care, or if they figured, 'well, if she can't see that she's not following the unwritten rules, we're best rid of her anyway.')

When I changed schools (to a smaller, less prestigious, but I would argue, in many respects, better, institution) I shone - I won awards, I was looked up to by some of the other grad students, they asked my advice on stuff. And I completed the Ph.D. and got an academic job on the first try. (Still, I spent a lot of years haunted by my past, and fearful of What If They Find Out I Didn't Leave There Because I Hated It Like I Claimed?)

So I let myself be haunted by the spectres of my (minor, in the Grand Scheme of Things) Failures Past but am unable to bask in the glow of past (or present) successes. Just the kind of person I am. For years, I told myself the reason I didn't make the cut the first time was that I was insufficiently devoted to The Cause (of getting my degree). I wasted a lot of time in self-criticism where really, some of the blame (at least) lies with bad advising, and a too-large school, and a relatively uncommited mentor. But I still think - if I had worked harder, would I have succeeded on the first go?* And it's hard for me, really, to know what the essential balance is - if I work 10 hours a day, is that enough? Is 12 necessary? 14? We used to boast in graduate school about how long the hours we put in each day were, but I suspect most people (self included) inflated the actual hours of work done per day by a factor of 1.5 to 2, to gain sympathy and to enjoy one-upmanship. ("Oh, you worked 12 hours Saturday? Well, I was in the field for 16 hours! I was there from before the sun rose until it was too dark to see the data sheets!" "Yeah? Well, I was in the lab so long that my girlfriend went to the cops to file a Missing Persons report!")

I'm also bad at equating a day of no clear successes or no finished things to a day of actual progress (I never could quite convince myself that mistakes are just a way of learning what not to do). So if I spend a day wrestling with the computer and still don't quite crack the nut of what I want to make it do, I see it as being little different from a day spent at home on the couch watching "Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi." Which is not true, not at all.

Which, to circle it all back to knitting (because How You Do Anything is How You Do Everything), knitting is pretty important to me. Why? Because it's visible progress. Because even if I only complete two rows on a scarf, I can look at those two rows and say "I completed that." Which is also probably why I'm less experimental with my knitting than some people are - again, I'd feel like if I knit half of the back of a cardigan as part of a pattern-designing exercise, and had to rip the whole dam' thing out, I'd feel, as I said, like I spent the evening just sitting on the couch watching "Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi." Which again, would not really be true.

I really need to work on that "even unsuccessful trials count as working" thing.

(*And really, upon reflection, I had opportunities at the second school I would never have had at the first - and at the first I was downtown in a big scary city without a car, and was a virtual hermit in the evenings [after being told horror stories about muggings and frotteurs and all that kind of rot]. Probably the move to the smaller school was meant to be, but it was one of those instances where the Universe had to give me a swift kick because I wouldn't have been motivated to move on my own)