Some unfair "positive" surprises, for a change

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Normally people judge me negatively in the way that I feel undeserved. Well, these past few days something unusual happend. Instead of receiving undeserved negative judgement I received undeserved positive judgement:

1. I got A- for a class where I was FAR behind on. Yes I know they curve grades in graduate classes. But the point is that, in that particular class, I was REALLY blowing it. I was wondering if I would get a B or a C, basically. I guess a B won't be too surprising (getting a C in grad school is rare so they won't give it to me unless they are totally pissed) but giving me A- is outright silly. Come on.

2. I got recognized as "outstanding researcher" despite the fact that, within 4 years of my being at this school, I didn't produce a single publication (the three publications that I had are from before). Now, if they were to say that I was outstanding STUDENT, then maybe (I have 3.94 GPA) but outstanding RESEARCHER -- no way; research is about publications, which I don't have. I guess I have one "upcoming" publication that I mentioned to my advisor, but I don't know why would they just take my word for it? Especially since (i) I told him just as much a year ago, and then that paper ended up being rejected back then (ii) my advisor acted very unhappy (and sometimes outright rude) with me since I haven't done something he asked me to do 2 years ago and was doing other things instead. And, by the way, the associate chair of graduate studies -- who told me about my recognition -- is a wife of that professor who is unhappy with me. So she probably knows about it.

Could this be the "other side of the coin" of the negative judgements that I been facting? Since I made an *impression* that I am a good student, people can "decide" that I am outstanding researcher despite the fact that it contradicts all the facts. By the same token, if a girl doesn't like me, she might "decide" I am creepy stalker, even though this contradicts all the facts TOO.

But oh well. Nice to see them err in the positive direction, for a change.

Congrats! Just a guess, but since you are working more from home now I assume your profs are seeing your work with fresh eyes. Without the prejudices that come with an aspie's awkwardness. And because you work from home you might feel better yourself (more sleep, less interactions) and your work has actually improved. Whatever it is keep it up.

Well, the thing is that I didn't do any actual "work" when I was at home. I was super-behind on my classes so ALL I was doing was trying to catch up. And classes don't count since we are talking about research, not classes.

The only research-related work that "might" have helped me was that my prof seems to be more pissed off when I present something incoherent than when I don't present anything at all. So maybe the fact that the past few weeks I didn't present anything at all made him less pissed. But still, "not doing anything" won't make one "outstanding researcher" would it.

I just realized its not as special as I thought. They sent another email to the "outstanding researchers" and "this time" they actually put their email addresses in the way that I could see them (as contrasted to yesterday when I just knew it was sent to me but I didn't know whom else it was sent to). In any case, there are 10 recepients of this email. I just counted the number of graduate students in the directory. It is 85. Now, "on the first glance" you might say "10 out of 85, its between 1 out of 8 and 1 out of 9 so thats great". But not so fast. Remember, I wasn't here just 1 year, I was here 4 years. And this year was the only year I was selected. So if you count the fact that I was here 4 years then the probability of my being on the top 1/8-th during ONE of them is (1/8)*4=1/2. So actually I am at the top 1/2, not the top 1/8. Well, its still nice to be on the top half, but not too special.

I guess to make myself feel better I could point out that they didn't update a directory recently so they don't have some of the new students listed. Like for example, one of my officemates is a first year student, and she is not listed. So maybe they have more than 85 students in which case it would be a bit more special. But, by the same token, maybe they don't remove the students that graduated right away either. So maybe them listing some students that aren't around any more "and" them forgetting to list the new students that are kinda balances each other out. But in any case, even if they did have, say, 100 students instead of 85, it wouldn't change things too much. So lets say there were 100 students, so 10 out of 100 is 1 out of 10. But, once again, I had 4 opportunities to be 1 out of 10, so its not really 1 out of 10, its 4 out of 10. Again, not that special.

Now, here is what will make it even worse. When I talked about 4 years, I was talking about my being in THIS school. But what about my being in all the OTHER schools? I guess I don't have to look at the undergrad since there are a lot more undergrads than grad students, so with undergrad the competition was probably a lot more fierce than 1 out of 10. But if I just add the number of years I spent in grad school, I spent 3 years doing my masters, 5 years doing my 1-st ph.d. and now I spent 4 years doing my 2-nd ph.d. So I spent 12 years. So if I make 12 attempts to be 1 out of 10, then I would be "expected" to "succeed" one of these times. So its not even top half any more, its me not being too awful.

And by the way, since I spent two paragraphs trying to focus on my current school, lets now look back at the other two schools I been to and ask myself: why was I not in top half in either of THESE? Since I wasn't in the top half back then, that implies I was in the BOTTOM half. And indeed I was. I mean they didn't let me teach in any of these other two schools and also they tried to expell me from the second one of these (thankfully they didn't succeed in expelling me but they cut off financial support instead so my mom had to send me money). Well, in the current school where I am now they treat me more like normal. They never considered expelling me and they never considered cutting off financial support either. They "did" consider stopping me from teaching and having me grade instead, but that was temporary, never permanent (I will be teaching next semester, for example). So I guess being top half here and bottom half in the previous schools doesn't look too surprising.