I’m having an attack of my academic inferiority complex. Most of my friends went to fairly prestigious schools: Cal Tech, MIT, Stanford, CMU… the list goes on a bit but those are the main ones. Sometimes when they talk about their classes I feel really pathetic because I don’t think I could have competed. I didn’t even try to get into a better school than CSUH. It was the only school I applied to. I was afraid of not being accepted. I was afraid of the potential debt that would accrue at a better school.
I keep thinking about going for my PhD as a way of proving that I am as smart as my friends, but I doubt it would actually work. I would still feel like, “Oh. It’s just in English. That isn’t a big deal.” I read 150 pages of Middlemarch last night in just over an hour. A friend asked me what I was doing and when I told him I prefaced it with several disclaimers about how anyone can do it and it isn’t a big deal. He tried to assure me that no, actually he a)wouldn’t be able to read anything so fast and b)probably wouldn’t really understand a Victorian novel. But, yeah. I don’t believe it. I don’t feel like I do anything particularly challenging for my degree. I feel like I am a total fraud. I say that I’m in grad school, but I feel like I don’t deserve the title because I’m not smart enough. 🙁
And now I am going to run off to be poked and burned. I’m not actually in the mood at all, but it is the last day.
Chica, I’m not a grad student, but I’m a senior at UCD, double majoring in English and Medieval Studies. Being what I am, I’m ok with Victorian. Still, there’s no way in HELL I could burn through 150 pages of anything in less than two, more likely three hours. I’m seriously impressed.
Now to go write a ten page paper on the Cavaliers and the Roundheads in the English civil wars in the next four hours. Fun in a bucket! Probably miss dance class, too… *grumble*
I actually can have the same thing about not having gone to a school that feels adequately prestigious, and for having a liberal arts degree.
I recently tried reading Mill on the Floss, and gave up about 40 pages in. Victorian novels just can’t hold my interest (I don’t think it is just Eliot, but maybe, who knows).
Sorry to disappoint you, but you have to be pretty damn smart to be up to date on Victorian lit – and to understand the subtext like that.
Plus, 150 pages with full comprehension, nay, analysis, in an hour is a very respectable pace.
You can generally hold your own with all the folks around you who have fancy pedegrees. (sic.) How much tolerance do you have for spending time with folks noticeably less smart than you? How much do they?
Finally, I know you can grasp that just because you chose something close doesn’t mean you don’t have a much longer reach. And if you’ve gotten this far in my comment without choking on my convoluted writing style, that in itself is an accomplishment! 😉
::kickintheshins:: ::twice::
ONce for myself, ’cause you’re being a tool – don’t sell yourself short.
And once for Golden Bear, for insulting Engligh majors.
Sweetie, you got into grad school. In my mind, that makes me inferor to you, because you’re going farther than I could. Add to that that you’re the first in you’re family, and, like wow, I’m in awe of you.
eh. Fancy academic pedigrees are useful as resume fodder, but the underlying quickness and intellectual flexibility of a given person are far more important, IMO, than getting the insider jokes about MemChu or the Infinite Corridor or room-hacking.
There are insider jokes about MemChu? *boggle*
Add me to the list of non-prestigious schools. I went to UC Santa Cruz, because I could afford it and because I had relatives there. (Bean went to UCSC because it forced her to move away from home, or she couldn’t have afforded to move out.)
This is what I’ve been learning in the last year: if something is easy for you, that’s because you’re GOOD AT IT. It’s not because it’s easy for everyone. There is no shame in doing what you’re GOOD AT. Why on earth should you have to struggle to do something you’re no good at? Especially if someone else *could* do it easily.
===>Play to your strengths and let others play to theirs.<===
ps: what’s with the poking and burning, anyhoo?
You are actually quite intelligent.
I say this based only on the interactions I have had with you. I went to a decent school. And have never really thought of those who went to better colleges as superior, they just had better access to resources. Doesn’t mean they did or didn’t use those resources. And the classes may have been harder, but then you weren’t there and can’t know that you wouldn’t have risen to the challenge. I never considered college as much of a big deal at all really. You can get the same education at a library and auditting classes on occasion. It’s not about where or about how much it cost. It’s about the capacity and aptitude to learn adn the desire to do so.
I am not belittling the efforts of those who attended good colleges. I am sure they were difficult and that those names look pretty on a resume. But, Frankly, I would say that I have not seen a remarkable difference in the people who did well at lesser colleges versus the people who did well at prestigious colleges when I talk to them or when they get their “think” on. People come from all manner of socio-economic backgrounds and can’t all make it into those pretigious schools.
And as for you, Miss Archer. You are among the smarter people I know, and I will continue to believe that, regardless of your mood. 8^P
I want to kick you and tell you you’re intelligent and beautiful and smart as a whip and and and….but that’s what others have already said. Consider it said, again.
Measuring what you are by what others around you have chosen is not a path that leads to lasting happiness. Measuring yourself by how well what you’ve chosen fits you, fires your intellect, and satisfies your soul, is.
I did this a lot before I realized the comparison game is a losing one, every time. Either I end up pleased because I’m doing better than the people around me (which, while satisfying at times, is less than nice/kind and leaves a bad taste in my mouth), or I end up depressed because I think everyone is doing better than I am and that I’ve wasted what potential I had, if indeed I had any. I still slip into it when I’m feeling down already, but I consider it a warning sign for me that I’m spiralling into a depression.
I usually end up playing this game with myself when I’m upset about something else in my life, something I don’t want to look at too closely. And I can always find some standard to measure myself against in which I’ll fall short. It’s the perfect losing proposition. There will always be someone better, smarter, prettier, younger, older, sharper…. Even if I’m top of my field in one respect, I can find another in which I’m rock bottom. But what the fuck does that have to do with me?
I don’t know, amiga. All I know is that it’s possible to find darkness in every situation. I got those skills down. I’m trying to hone the ones that enable me to find the light instead of feeding the darkness. Want to join me? I could use the company, and the help.
I hardly feel like the person to speak to this, because of my rather complete lack of formal education. I have often felt this, and no doubt will again. But at the same time, I am aware that I am doing things and being effective at things that many more (formally) educated people aren’t.
For me it comes down to a few things. There are some places one can go to have people explain to you information which is in books. There one can also discuss with the explainers and the other students different aspects of the information, and perhaps come up with new things. That would be school.
So theres information, ideas, and effectivness with the information and ideas.
Do you have to go to Cal Tech to get information? No. There is plentiful information in libraries and on the internet.
Do you have to go to MIT to get ideas? Well, I don’t. I talk with friends and get plenty of ideas. More than I could ever realize.
Does going to Stanford make you effective? I think a rigorous school can help one learn the discipline to be effective. But at the same time, school does teach some people to only think inside the box.
Don’t get me wrong, I think formal education is good. I think it can give one a depth and bredth that is harder to achieve learning on one’s own.
But it comes down to how much information you can cram in your skull, how you use that information, and the drive to make things happen. I do not see you lacking in any of those areas. I am drawn to you in part because you are smart.
I can read and understand Victorian novels, but I have never read anything at anything remotely approaching your speed. It would take me weeks to read that.
Take the case that it wouldn’t have mattered where you went to school or where you go to school now, you’d still be sitting here questioning your intelligence. If you were in a Harvard graduate program you’d be sitting in Boston doubting yourself, and worse, because you’d be able to justify your own inferiority by the vast intelligence and talent of your peers. My best girlfriends went to undergrad at MIT and Harvard, grad school at Yale and Berkeley and Stanford, and you know what, they doubt their skills and intelligence just as much as anyone else I know. So do I. It’s just a part of being human.
Wow. I kinda don’t know what to say. Intelligence is not proved by amount of education. Period.
I believe you are a mighty intelligent beauty but that doesn’t have anything to do with your schooling. If you want more schooling, if it’s a true desire for you, go for it. If it has something to do with competition with friends *please* don’t. Save your energy for yourself.
I’ve known a true genius who purposely sabotaged his education. He had the ability but not the desire. There are loads of super smarties that won’t ever get the kind of education you have pursued. That doesn’t make them less smart and it sure does not make you less smart to not continue on and on with your education if you don’t want to.
How could you possibly be a “fraud”? You worked for it, didn’t you? You earned it. It’s your accomplishment. Own it.
Good, smart, pretty, silly girl.
*SQUISH*
There are many different kinds of intelligence, and nobody is at the top of all of them. I have no idea what your academic intelligence is, not having seen you in that context, but in any case academic intelligence is very overrated.
Yup, the college you are in has no bearing on your intelligence level. Really. I’ve been at Berkeley (and got kicked out). There were some genuinely smart people there and there were morons who got by because they were good at regurgitating information by rote. I saw a few papers with decent marks which some of my JC profs would have thrown in the garbage. I had to give lectures on my art which required me to fabricate intricate tales of blarney which awed people and then had to repeat them for the higher ups until I felt nauseated by my own pretentious BS.
My MA was received at a school that basically doles out certificates to those who can borrow enough money for their tuition and manage to attend classes regularly. I went there because I was afraid to go for my PhD where I would be required to take the same class that got me booted from Berkeley in the first place. …and it occurs to me that I’ve lost my point and I am now rambling. Oh, yeah…. so what I was saying is this; my grad school is far crappier than yours ever could be, but you don’t seem to hold that as a final statement about my personal intellectual abilities. Therefore, you should not judge yourself by your school either.
So there!
You are smart. There’s no getting around it. And if someone is going to judge the size of your brain by the prestige of your school, well then, I’m going to just have kick their ass. How’s *that* for intellectual debate?
P.S. …don’t make me kick your ass.
you are the cutest thing ever.
CWRU
No comprendo.
It’s a prestigious engineering school in Cleveland – Case Institute of Technology is part of Case Western Reserve University.