There was a postsecret that jumped out at me this week. And then a kind person replied with a link to this article, which posits that getting a Ph.D. should make one feel stupid.
And it all makes sense to me now. We are continually at the edge of our knowledge, our experiences, our competencies. We are thrown into the deep end over and over again. Here, teach a class. Write an exam. Publish a paper. Think critically... all the time. Volunteer for more research. Write a dissertation. See clients. Determine a diagnosis for this student. Give recommendations. Keep it together.
It's tiring. It's frustrating. Almost every day I feel like I don't know what I'm doing, and I guess the point is that, well, I don't. I'm learning it. The way I see it, the best way to learn is to push your limits every day. Just be sure to allow for some breaks here and there to regroup and remind yourself that feeling like a failure is part of the process.
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In other news, I learned today that indeed I do not have basal cell carcinoma. Instead, the bump on my nose was what we like to call a fibrous papule (eeew, I know), and benign. I still get to rock the nose band-aid for another week or so.
Oh, and in other other news, we scored our free tix to the Postsecret talk at Duke tomorrow night. I'll give a full report later.
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Comments
Rule of thumb for me in college: the better I thought I did on an exam, the worse I actually did; transversely, the worse I thought I did, the better I actually did.