Orlando Bloom Hoping to Grow Out of Elf and Pirate Roles, Perhaps Play Dancing Cat on London StageFrom here.
May 31, 2007
Making News
This may be my favourite headline of all time:
May 21, 2007
Missing You
From a description of Bay to Breakers:
Some participants were motivated to run fast and others were motivated to drink beer in imaginative ways -- such as while doing a handstand over a keg in a shopping cart on the corner of Howard and Fifth streets.Oh, how I miss you San Francisco. I miss your crazy residents (except for the certifiable wackos whose curses fill your rather squalid public buses), your sanctioned public looniness, your familiar steep and winding streets, and your abundant taquerias. I miss the friends who are similarly attracted to your aforementioned qualities and who choose to live in and near you. Hopefully, we will all see each other again soon.
May 16, 2007
Stoopidhead vs. the braggart
One of the issues I've been struggling with lately is feeling stupid. Like most PhD students, I find that the more I learn, the less I know. However, feeling stupid is, well, stupid considering that all the evidence points to me not being stupid. Yes, I feel stupid for feeling stupid. I'm smart like that.
Z has been "gently" encouraging me to get over this by saying things like, "Get over it already!" I've been doing my best to heed his advice but it's a challenge. Whenever I start feeling clever, I either immediately do or say something really dumb or, more insidiously, start to feel like a proud braggart. This leads me to my question de mois:
How does one act smart and clever without coming across as a know-it-all jerk?
Got any answers? I sure don't.
For me, this goes back a long way. I remember winning the maths prize in year 8 and dying on the inside as what little social standing I had evaporated. There was nothing cute about a smart girl in middle school. Being smart incurred much ribbing and I quickly learned to down-play my grades when I couldn't hide them. I really only stopped doing this during the final years of my masters, though I rarely volunteered to share my marks.
This all came to a head last week when I attended a reception for recipients of the University's prestigious scholarships. There are about 1,000 post-grads at the University, 350 of which have been granted federal scholarships. I'm one of the 350. Of the 1,000, 11 were awarded a prestigious scholarship; I'm one of those 11. Hearing these statistics out loud made me realize that someone, somewhere thinks I'm smart (I can hear you groaning at that sentence, Z). I need to remember this when I find myself unable to articulate a complex scientific thought.
One of the difficulties is that I'm me and so am completely unqualified to assess how well (or not) I present myself and my thoughts. I don't know if I come across as a bumbling idiot or a brilliant scientist, though can guess that it's somewhere in between and highly reliant upon my caffeine intake. Yes, it's true: caffeine does make you smarter.
I've recently realized that this only matters so much, is so important, because science is what I want to do with my life. This is what I enjoy doing. If I'm not good at this - or am only mediocre, I'll feel like I'm wasting my time. I want to accomplish things and feel like I contribute; if I'm only ever fair to middlin', I won't feel like I'm doing the best thing with my life.
Fortunately, someone somewhere thinks this is a good thing for me to do. Perhaps one day I'll realize that they're right.
Z has been "gently" encouraging me to get over this by saying things like, "Get over it already!" I've been doing my best to heed his advice but it's a challenge. Whenever I start feeling clever, I either immediately do or say something really dumb or, more insidiously, start to feel like a proud braggart. This leads me to my question de mois:
How does one act smart and clever without coming across as a know-it-all jerk?
Got any answers? I sure don't.
For me, this goes back a long way. I remember winning the maths prize in year 8 and dying on the inside as what little social standing I had evaporated. There was nothing cute about a smart girl in middle school. Being smart incurred much ribbing and I quickly learned to down-play my grades when I couldn't hide them. I really only stopped doing this during the final years of my masters, though I rarely volunteered to share my marks.
This all came to a head last week when I attended a reception for recipients of the University's prestigious scholarships. There are about 1,000 post-grads at the University, 350 of which have been granted federal scholarships. I'm one of the 350. Of the 1,000, 11 were awarded a prestigious scholarship; I'm one of those 11. Hearing these statistics out loud made me realize that someone, somewhere thinks I'm smart (I can hear you groaning at that sentence, Z). I need to remember this when I find myself unable to articulate a complex scientific thought.
One of the difficulties is that I'm me and so am completely unqualified to assess how well (or not) I present myself and my thoughts. I don't know if I come across as a bumbling idiot or a brilliant scientist, though can guess that it's somewhere in between and highly reliant upon my caffeine intake. Yes, it's true: caffeine does make you smarter.
I've recently realized that this only matters so much, is so important, because science is what I want to do with my life. This is what I enjoy doing. If I'm not good at this - or am only mediocre, I'll feel like I'm wasting my time. I want to accomplish things and feel like I contribute; if I'm only ever fair to middlin', I won't feel like I'm doing the best thing with my life.
Fortunately, someone somewhere thinks this is a good thing for me to do. Perhaps one day I'll realize that they're right.
May 10, 2007
May 01, 2007
This could start a war somewhere else
I finally dropped the boat off for repairs today. It's taken this long (this being about four weeks!) to get the approval from the department to not file an insurance claim. It has been an incredibly frustrating process.
On my drive down to Williamstown, I saw a billboard advertisement for a web-site that lists homes for sale and lease. The caption read something like, "It's so easy, anyone can find a new home." The photo was of a man in a nicely tailored grey suit sitting on a chair. The model's head had been replaced with that of Dubya. I'm glad to see that Australia is not above publicly mocking his stupidity. Now if we would all just get around to recognizing Howard's stupidity in the upcoming election...
On my drive down to Williamstown, I saw a billboard advertisement for a web-site that lists homes for sale and lease. The caption read something like, "It's so easy, anyone can find a new home." The photo was of a man in a nicely tailored grey suit sitting on a chair. The model's head had been replaced with that of Dubya. I'm glad to see that Australia is not above publicly mocking his stupidity. Now if we would all just get around to recognizing Howard's stupidity in the upcoming election...
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