Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to comment on this thread explaining the most awesome thing you've done this month. You may be as blatantly proud of yourself as you feel. You may unabashedly consider yourself the coolest freaking person ever because of that awesome thing you're dying to tell everyone about. This is the place to do just that.
Remember, however, that this isn't any kind of progress thread. Nor is it any kind of proposal thread. This thread is solely for people to talk about the awesome things they have done. Not "will do". Not "are working on". Have already done. This is to cultivate an environment of object level productivity rather than meta-productivity methods.
So, what's the coolest thing you've done this month?
(I think this is the most recent thread, so anything since January is fair game, assuming you haven't already mentioned it.)
Getting my first adviser, Professor C, was a nightmare that made me miserable for a month. I really wanted him as my adviser because I think he is one of the only good scientists in my field and my department. I also had long-term plans to ask him to advise my later degree. I met with him once, and showed him a vague, decent research proposal. I focused more on being charming than on the research, because this had been working well for me with the other professors I knew. Unfortunately (and fortunately!) C is more focused on the science. He told me he would think about it, then email me back in a week. He never emailed me. I emailed him. He didn't respond. I emailed him. He didn't respond. I despaired, decided I had ruined my career and destroyed my chances of succeeding in the field I love by making him dislike me and now having no advisor, and emailed him again. He didn't respond. After six weeks of this I told a different professor what had happened, who told my C ignores most emails, even from other professors, and it's really hard to interpret his lack of response. He recommended that I just show up at his office and try to talk to him again. I worked desperately hard, trying to create a proposal so good it would redeem my earlier failure and weird stalking in C's eyes. I became completely obsessed, didn't sleep, read every paper in my entire subfield, thought and talked it over for a week, thought of five original questions, of which three were "important," wrote the proposal with every important point underlined and put in bold, and finally put on my most professional blazer and went to C's office. When I found him and showed him my proposal, I was literally shaking. He agreed to be my adviser right away. He seemed kind of confused about the whole thing, and said he just forgot to answer my emails. Sigh.
I got the second adviser because I got the first one. He emailed his colleague Professor K recommending that K meet with me. Otherwise I would not have stood a chance of catching K's attention, since he does not take early-stage students and does not teach at my school. I wanted a paying position as a research assistant in K's lab, in addition to him being one of my official advisors, but K was expressing ambivalence about the idea. I basically wrote an extended research proposal/contract, stating exactly what I wanted to do, how I was going to do it, what I expected of him, and what I wanted in return. He agreed, and said he deeply admired my audacity, and that my display of confidence made him feel more confident about my ability, and that I was the sort of intense and serious person he wanted in his lab. This is one of the academically boldest things I have ever done, but I had a strong sense that he would appreciate that sort of behavior.
I write all this because I'm not really sure what made the difference. I certainly acted bolder than I usually do, and I've noticed that most of the good things I do follow bursts of very intense misery and feelings of insecurity that I channel into desperately hard work. I'm never surprised when I do well, though; the insecurity is this sort of instrumental self-imposed drama I use. I wish I could work desperately hard without such a seemingly mentally unhealthy process, but so far I haven't found any better personal motivators than my intense fear, even dread, of failure and the desire to protect my sense of my own identity as a smart, successful person.
Thank you, this is helpful information, and reinforces my notion that for reasons I can't figure out, emails are never useful for communicating anything other than practical matters with superiors.
Was this your first time having a boss? / generally being in a position where a stranger was in a position of formal power in this way? The first time I had a boss I kept getting this impression that he thought I wasn't doing enough...but then I realized that he actually thought I was pretty great and that people in dominant positions are often sort of aloof and ... (read more)