When I was 16, I found a diary my dad (now dead) kept when he was an undergrad at Berkeley. At the end of every day, he would list all the time he had wasted that day. It would go something like this:
"20 minutes walking around apartment aimlessly
30 minutes wasted while studying because I was distracted
10 minutes slept in
Added up: I wasted an hour. I MUST do better than that! I am a failure!"
Because I never knew my dad past age 8, I never saw this side of him while he was alive. Yet it scared me, because already at 16 I had the same hyper-critical take on my work habits.
Tuesday I finished my last final - all three were easier than I thought they'd be. If anything, what I've learned this semester is not all in the textbooks.
I would say the most valuable thing I did was my honors project on Donne. I have an odd knack for making different projects come together into a singularity. So while I was working on religious poetry, I ended up dabbling in cognitive psychology. The Police had a song about that: synchronicity.
When my proposal on Donne was rejected for the honors conference, my heart sank. All that work and they didn't care! But then I saw a greater opportunity: to work on the idea more over summer and see if I could get it put out somewhere else. Is that presumptuous? Maybe. But my professor advised me that to get anywhere in the world, one needs a little ego.
That may also be why I have never had a dearth of mentors and advisors around. I am not afraid to approach them for advice. This is my blessing as well as one of my 'signs' that I am being called to my scholarly vocation.
Peace.
AMDG
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