This is my favorite window view at work. It is right by the coffee machine in the little kitchenette on the 6th floor of the Broad, where I work. When I am waiting for my coffee I like to stand by this window. The view is of a corner of the Broad Institute and one side of the Whitehead Institute. Every square in this large grid is a part of a lab; each little window contains miniature people like me whose days are spent in the lab and in front of the computer—in my view, just a two-dimensional glass square and sometimes the publications that ultimately flow out of it; to them, everything, and if they looked out their window they’d see me waiting for my coffee and I would be small.
This is my favorite window view at home. We live in Peabody, which is not quite a suburb, more a small town in its own right but without the usual trappings of a small town, and far too far away to be an extension of Boston like Cambridge is. As I write this it’s raining, and foggy, and dark—the start of spring. Cars bring up rain from the street and their headlights illuminate it and the lights and the chimneys and the treetops are outlined in the bright night sky, and you can just see the lights on our fence. I grew up in a neighborhood without fences, low to the ground; now I live and I work exclusively in tall places, surrounded always by the little lights of other people’s lives.
In 2020, right before the start of the pandemic, I bought myself tickets to see Carmen at the Boston Ballet as a late birthday present. Carmen was postponed to August, then canceled, and now in 2022 I have transferred my tickets finally to see a ballet set to the Rolling Stones as a late birthday present.
Ballet has a magical effect. The last time I went to the ballet I saw Robbins. I was just about to start my PhD. On the way home on the train platform waiting for the Red Line, looking over the tracks at the other platform, everything seemed magical, timed. For a few hours I saw intention in everyone’s movements and postures and I felt a beautiful connection to the train schedule and to the city and everywhere I looked I saw mathematics and art. I felt myself a part of a giant clock, ticking and ticking and me so small in it. And tonight looking out at the windows and the fog I feel a part of a giant clock, ticking and ticking and me so small in it.
The man living alone in the $4 million mansion across the street has over the past month gradually accumulated not one, not two, but six Christmas trees, at least, with lights and decorations on all the trees and outdoor lights on all his trees and fences outside, which he doesn’t have on a timer, like I thought he would, but turns on by hand every day at sunset, and garlands and strings of lights on the stairs and walls, lit up like a Christmas Gatsby mansion projecting green and red and blue and yellow onto the road when it rains at night, a million tiny colorful moons reflecting off our little river of a street. Every day he sits alone in his home office on the other side of the house facing the main road until dark, when the sun sets and the dark sets in and he sits in the dark lit up by his computer screen and then walks through the house and around the house turning on all the lights and makes dinner in the big open kitchen behind the big bay window with one of the larger trees, which has a nearly identical tree of just slightly smaller size situated precisely above it like an axis of cheer crossing the ceiling through the next floor up. That tree is the one he had last year, too, and the year before it, and usually he leaves it up for months into the new year. (Usually it’s just the one—the profusion of lights inside and outside is a new development, just for this year, or at least hasn’t been around when I’ve been in town, and I’m always not by now.)
This is my first winter break away from my family and my first winter break with my Cambridge family. Our roommate goes to work and my partner Cory goes to work a few days a week and I work remotely from home and occasionally go to the grocery store. We watch movies and TV shows and we cook elaborate meals and we undersleep and oversleep and stress out about work. We go for walks at least once a day on most days. Sometimes we drive around.
Here is our Christmas tree, which we got from Ricky’s Flower Market in Union Square. It is small, because our apartment is small and also because we are hoping that if it lives through the winter and the weight of the decorations we’ve burdened it with we might plant it someplace where it can live a good life.
Another cheerful Christmas thing we did was to send out Christmas cards. They looked like this:
—All very strange. It bothers me that the couples-jacuzzi one has the marshmallows literally skewered. Most menacing is the marshmallow face melted into the hot chocolate surrounded by little marshmallow body parts floating next to it, and more marshmallow body parts on the ground by the cup. (I am also bothered by the happy messages inside reflecting for the reader how lovely it is to spend Christmas with family, in a year when most people safely can’t.)
These aren’t the Christmas cards we ordered. Shortly before Christmas we got a Christmas card from Cory’s uncle, which was very classy and nice and made us very happy and also regretful that we had nothing prepared to send to give those same good feelings in return. We ordered some Christmas cards with cute animals on them. (I like to optimize and look at every option before making a choice, but Cory saw them and knew he liked them and we bought them right away without evaluating other options, which is a new feeling for me.) We got these instead. Cory decided that we should salvage the whole situation by including hot chocolate and stickers (two stamps for two ounces almost exactly!). They turned out nice.
The actual process was a very fun assembly line, perfect as a background task during a movie. It reminded me a lot of our lab’s holiday card assembly lines, only while doing them just the two of us I got to do every stage myself, which was fun. Cory writes pithy and clever messages that make people laugh. I write really long and heartfelt and far less funny messages, which takes a lot more time, signing some or most of the cards: “Wishing you and yours health, safety, love, cheer—and maybe even happiness.” Here is one early stage of our assembly line:
Christmas card giving seems to have increased this year, or at least it feels like it has. We got five Christmas cards! I am going to be using two of them as proof of residency for a parking permit. I do not think we usually get five Christmas cards.
The week before Christmas we had a magical snowstorm (like a foot of snow) and our first time shoveling cars and even sidewalks, which was great exercise and a lot of fun. It was the kind of snow that makes the sky pink at night and makes our usual streets feel unfamiliar and quiet and perfect, and everyone says hi when we pass each other even though we don’t usually do that and don’t know each other at all. I bought shovels the night before, and then I got up before sunrise and I got to spend most of the whole day outside, with breaks to get warm and change my socks and gloves. In the morning it was just me and the plows and the snow falling and the light beams from the plows made gorgeous lighthouse light beams through the dense snow falling. A few people were skiing. There was an incident with a FedEx truck that got stuck in the snow and shredded a parked car. I got to see a family of rats playing in the snow, which was actually delightful. It was overall an eventful day.
On Christmas Eve we went for a long walk during the day and again at night to look at everyone’s lights in our neighborhood and the nearby neighborhoods. We called our families and opened presents, then Cory made a lasagna by a new recipe and I fell asleep on the couch, and then he fell asleep and we burned the lasagna and that whole experience reminded me a bit much of undergrad. (We did end up trying what was between the top layer of burn and the bottom layer of burn and it must have been a very good lasagna.) The next day was warm and raining, which melted most of the remaining snow, and we had a lovely warm walk under the rain looking at lights in other neighborhoods and then when it got too cold and windy we went home and opened our presents to each other and made duck by another new recipe, which we did not burn and which turned out wonderfully, and watched Christmas movies and built wintry Lego sets. The day after we drove to a friend’s empty apartment for a change in environment and did a virtual Secret Santa with Cory’s friends from high school and looked at Christmas lights in another neighborhood. My Secret Santa got me a candle called Exhilarating, which in this case means peppermint and rosemary, a sugar scrub called Exhilarating, which in this case means peppermint, rosemary, coconut oil, almond oil, and shea butter and is apparently not edible despite tasting delicious, and honey and almond and olive oil soap that is not called Exhilarating—all very lovely smells, the former two of which give me the same good feeling as one time when I accidentally got mint toothpaste in my eye.
I really like American Christmas. I don’t think any of us expected it when we moved here, because Christmas in Russia (at least in the Orthodox church) happens on the Julian calendar two weeks later and is a purely religious holiday, and the usual Christmas things—the presents and the party and the tree with the lights on it—are all New Year’sthings to us. My mom likes to tell me that our first year in America, in Chicago, I, probably not yet fully speaking English but apparently already properly indoctrinated into the tradition of the American Christmas, was the one to pull the rest of the family into the proper ritual. On Christmas, which was going to be a regular day for us, I said: “But where are the presents? Aren’t we inviting everyone? Mom, don’t you know it’s Christmas?” Mom took me to the store and we picked out presents for the other recent Russian immigrant children living in our neighborhood, and we invited our small immigrant fold and had a lovely last-minute American Christmas party in Russian and everyone had a lovely time.
My most special memories of Christmas music in particular are from Chicago on an outdoor ice rink that doesn’t exist anymore, where I used to skate twice a week from right after school until late in the evening. My mom used to pick me up from school and drive me to the rink with dinner in a tupperware I’d eat on the drive while doing my homework, and then I had karate lessons sometimes and then a few hours of downtime on the rink, then skating lessons, then more skating until Mom was done with work and ready to pick me up, and sometimes she’d skate with me too. I loved skating. The rink was downtown, hidden from the road between tall buildings, and was never crowded even when the other rinks were. A lot of the time the staff played Christmas songs over the big outdoor speakers and sometimes the snow fell while I skated. Whenever I hear certain older Christmas songs that is what I think of, the snow falling and the cold air and the taste of blood from the cold and the pink sky and the tall Chicago downtown just barely darker than the night sky all around me and above me with its beautiful lights.
I miss my family, especially after Skype calls and missed messages that should be days and meals and adventures lived together in person. I just couldn’t justify risking the rest of our winters for this one.
The lesson, if there is one, I guess is to prioritize and be grateful for your health and the health of your loved ones and to make the best of what you have.
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The Christmas cards we actually bought were these. The Christmas cards we received were these, and the roll of stickers I bought was this one. It isn’t too late to send cards. You can say they got lost, or that you’re feeling Russian and your cards are meant to arrive by New Year’s.
If you like them, my Christmas lights are these, which I also own in Halloween colors, and my icicles are these. (I also really like these curtain lights, which I bought for my parents in off-white and for a friend in off-white and pink.) The combination of the icicles and colorful lights, reflecting off the wall and off and through the icicles, especially at night, gives a very nice effect of a snowy-rainy street in the winter, and makes it feel like there might be cozy snow and adventure outside even if the snow is melted or it’s raining instead. Bonus points if you arrange the lights around and behind winter Lego sets. Extra bonus points if you build the winter Lego sets while watching some classic American Christmas movies.
My parents got us skis, for which I’m counting down the days until our next big snowstorm (there were a few people skiing on the road in the early morning when it was just the plows and few adventurers and me). I got them a portable-ish pull-up bar that seemed pretty similar to ours, two cozy candles, and a wintry 3d puzzle and a salt-tree activity. Cory got me a book of Taylor Swift songs adapted to the piano, which I think I will just write the notes in because I still can’t sightread and life is too short to not play songs I want to play, and a watercolors and paper set with paper small enough to be a low-pressure art commitment, which is very important to me (unless I’m drawing something very special and fancy I always fold the page I’m drawing on in half first to make it less scary). Our friend in Florida sent us a box of starfruit from her backyard, which is a hilarious contrast to the weather here.
My Secret Santa asked for baking things and for a candle and said they like beach things, which in New England means something that got washed up and raked over the rocks in the cold, so I got them this driftwood candle and a danish dough whisk and a lame and a really exciting cookbook of bread recipes. Last winter Cory and I took a no-kneed baking class at Harvard that changed our lives, and the recipes from the class were based on those in that book. A lame is a special tool for carving designs into the bread, and is actually what gave away that I was that person’s Secret Santa—they were opening parts of the present and started opening the razors and I had to warn them that those were razors and to please not open them any further in a manner that was appropriate only for things that aren’t razors. (I also got Cory that same book and a lame, with a similar worry about the razors, and I’m very excited to try carving fancy patterns into our breads.)
This year’s present that I am most proud of was to two children of a close lifelong friend, one of whom I met when they were very young and one of whom I’ve only seen on Facebook. I got them a fancy hardcover Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman, which has absolutely gorgeous black-and-white illustrations, and crayons to color them with. A really good, funny book with beautiful illustrations is a very nice present, I think, especially if it comes with permission to color.
Here are ten nice presents to give to someone you’re not sure how to give presents to, perhaps because they’re your Secret Santa and you don’t know them that well:
Tiny notebooks. Everyone needs tiny notebooks. They can write down their ideas, or their todo lists, or five nice things that happened to them that day, or their unwritten novel. If you’d like, you can suggest things you think they might like to write, and they may or may not follow your suggestions. Texture is important here, and the line type and spacing. Get them something that is pleasant and interesting to hold and has classy thin lines or even a grid.
Nice inky pens. I like these pens, which are my favorites, for todo lists and fancy or important writing and art, and I like these pens, which I used to borrow from lab, for flowy-mind, lower pressure writing. It’s most important that the ink flows nicely. If the person you are shopping for has a favorite color that you know about, you can get them pens in their favorite color and they’ll probably like that.
Little circle sleds. A lot of adults in cities don’t have sleds, or space for sleds. I couldn’t find a satisfactory modern American version of the little butt sled I had as a kid (as well as an actual, much larger sled). A little butt sled is not as fun as a real sled but it’s very easy to store and transport, and is much better than having no sled at all. If you buy them several they can bring a friend or you can keep one.
Nice candles and fancy soaps. A nice way to gift a smell. Texture is also valuable here, albeit secondary. It’s nice to get them something varied and interesting, like a soap with little oats in it or a candle with coffee beans on the sides. Take care not to get anything containing lavender or tea tree oil (which is sad because I love tea tree oil, and still use it even though I know I shouldn’t) if the product is meant to go on the skin.
A star finder, which can tell you what stars are in the sky at any given moment. (Stellarium is even better, but not as portable.)
Hot chocolate, which almost everyone likes and which is apparently available online mostly in absurd quantities. (If they don’t like hot chocolate, they definitely at least like someone who does.)
A book you really like, maybe with a custom bookmark you drew or post-it notes on your favorite pages with some notes on why you liked that part. Don’t write in the book itself, maybe, in case they don’t like it and want to sell it later.
A nice teacup, maybe with a little saucer for it. My grandmother on my mom’s side sometimes gives me nice teacups. They all make me very happy every time I want to feel fancy, and someday maybe I’ll have tea parties. I like to occasionally gift people flowering tea. Tea is a low-stress gift you can give a person lots of times, which is nice.
A nice potted plant that is not too likely to die soon. Plants are nice. Bonus points if you made or decorated the pot, or if you put some special rocks from a special beach or haunted warehouse or other special destination on the surface of the soil, or if the plant is a clipping from a larger plant of yours that you particularly like or particularly don’t like or if the soil contains the ashes of their enemies, delivered as a message of goodwill for the coming new year and a release of your debts. Hopefully they don’t think of the plant as a metaphor for your relationship.
Here are ten things you probably shouldn’t give people:
A copy of your dissertation, probably—especially if you don’t know that person that well, especially if that person is not your thesis advisor or otherwise on your committee (because if they are your thesis advisor or otherwise on your committee then a copy of your dissertation would actually be a very good present).
A book you don’t like, with a note saying you do like it, with the absolute worst and most boring parts highlighted—with real highlighter marks so they can’t resell it to buy something nicer.
Their dissertation, with lots of comments in red—especially if they’ve already graduated but still have nightmares about grad school.
Pencils with the lead pre-broken inside, probably.
Someone else’s dissertation.
A plane ticket, given the pandemic.
A surprise visit (or any kind of visit), given the pandemic.
A blank notebook with “Your Dissertation” written on the cover. In fact, I find this potential gift so distasteful and cruel that I made one really quick that you can buy online. Here are two blank notebooks (click the images), one with “Your Dissertation” written on the cover and one with “Your Thesis” written on the cover:
You can also get them as clocks or drink coasters if that would upset you more, or magnets or stickers or postcards or t-shirts or mugs or laptop cases or clothes for your child or blankets and pillows to hug at night or the smallest zipper bag.
Live bugs, like 1000 mealworms or 1500 ladybugs (pretty much the only thing worse than a blank notebook with “Your Dissertation” written on the cover).
Wishing you and yours health, safety, love, cheer—and maybe even happiness.
This being my first ever blog post (not really) since forever (kind of), and therefore necessitating some form of introduction, I share with you my entry in our high school class’s ten-year reunion yearbook, created in lieu of a major superspreading event.
What is your name?
Lydia Andreyevna Krasilnikova.
Where do you live now?
Cambridge, MA, USA.
What is your occupation or field that you work in?
I am a computational biologist. I study infectious disease and disease outbreaks. I also draw space cows at @nightlyfieldlog and occasionally write articles about scientist culture.
What are some life events that have occurred? (marriage, children, education, achievements, etc.)
I got my SB and MEng and am currently working on my PhD. My partner Cory and I have been together for almost nine years now. We met in college (lived in the same dorm). He’s a mechanical engineer. No kids (yet).
What is one unusual experience you have had since graduating from State High?
Teaching was weird. One of my first times reserving a room for office hours I waited way too late and the room I got was a special room above the Museum. I got a message saying I would need to pick up a key. When I came by to pick up the key the person in charge was flustered and very confused, told me I wasn’t supposed to have been able to reserve that room at all, and finally said I could have the room just for this week but that I and my students were not to eat anything while in the room and that we were absolutely not allowed to touch anything. Anyway, it turned out to be the human specimens room. It was full of skeletons, human skeletons and skeletons of human-like primates, and skulls on shelves behind glass, and stacked little cardboard boxes that I can only assume contained more bones. (In addition, the lights were automatic and apparently I don’t move that much because they kept turning off.) No students showed up to office hours that week.
High school was a magical time. I was obsessed with the radio, and I carried around a little wind-up Grundig. I knew all the stations in our town, and in the neighboring towns, and I vividly remember the staticky morning talk show wake-ups and the smell of the wet morning air in the early autumn and the hope I had for every single day. I knew all the genres of stations, and I thought I knew all the genres of people. I dressed in mostly all black, with one non-black color at a time, ostensibly to show everyone I was hardcore but secretly because I had no idea how to match colors. I ruined all my textbooks by pressing leaves between the pages. I was always late, especially to first period, and I got a decent chunk of my best studying done in detention and Saturday school with my favorite math teacher. I learned that authority figures can let you down, and that other people, including some trustworthy adults, can open doors for you and make your dreams possible. I wasn’t yet grateful for nor understood the preciousness of their consistently showing up for me (even as I did not not consistently show up to, well, anything). I unquestioningly thought I could do anything I wanted to do—which to me meant, ultimately, getting into MIT, leading to some unknown secure future, the vision or meaning of which I hadn’t thought through at all (other than, of course, an MIT boyfriend). I hadn’t yet experienced or learned about sexism—or xenophobia, or racism, or imposter syndrome, or the sadder sides of immigration, or most bad things (and I don’t think I would have gotten as far as I have if I had). As far as I knew, I was smart and hardworking and if I decided to do something it got done.
Things that would surprise then me about current me:
that radio plays much less of a part in my life
and kayaking, and camping and hiking
that, ten years out of high school, and having graduated from MIT, I live with roommates in a not-fancy apartment
that I still don’t usually feel that I belong, and that the weird awkwardness I felt in classrooms of older or cooler students never fully went away (and maybe was never about age)
that I actually did pull it off, all of it
If twelve-year-old me, lying on the carpet of her second-story bedroom at 11pm switching between homework and calling friends on the light tan corded phone (yes, actually) and obsessively refreshing the MIT Admissions blogs, could see me, I think, she would be beyond thrilled, floored, some kind of astonished. I achieved most of her dreams. I got into MIT. I blogged for MIT Admissions, which was my browser homepage and obsession (obsession) from ages 12 through 18. I don’t think I can overstate what a big deal that would have been to her. (People even read my writing! Sometimes a lot of people, and sometimes a lot.) I finished a double major that sounds like a triple major. I got an MEng. I got my MIT boyfriend.
Writing it out, it sounds ridiculous. I even got into Harvard for grad school after MIT, which I hadn’t even bothered to imagine. I even wrote for Technology Review, not once but multiple times, in print (my own name, in a byline, in print)—the same magazine a younger me was utterly entranced by at an alum family friend’s parents’ house, the very origin of the foundation for the future self that I spent the next half-decade carefully planning and imagining and singularly working toward. I was even on TV. I was even on the cover of a newspaper. It all happened.
I am not the person I think I thought I would be, nor am I anymore the person who imagined her. I’m steadier, I hope, and my risks are more measured, which may or may not be a good thing. I have thinner skin and a softer shell. I care deeply, far too deeply, about what people think of me—not just the clothes and the music, but my academic accomplishments and my mind and my career. I’m far less confident, even as I’ve progressed academically, even as I’ve gotten far more comfortable around people and inside my own body. I’ve disappointed a lot of people whose opinions I care about, including myself—something that just wasn’t possible back then. I’m more concerned about other people in general, and not just in a bad way. I’m kinder to my body. I’m more concerned about balance.
Sometimes I wonder what that younger me, the designer, the true me, as she seems to be in my head, would do with the opportunities and challenges I have. I wish I could transplant her into my mind for a week, either to take the lead on my work or to sit back and critique. What would she think of my PhD so far? She’d probably work far harder, or at least with more focus, with absolutely no self-doubt. She probably wouldn’t hesitate or wait for permission or approval. Would she be a better self-advocate? Would she be unshakable in pursuing her goals? Would she speak up more aggressively for her ideas, and do a better job of asking for resources to carry them out?
Clearly the thing I miss, really really miss, about the person I used to be is her assured, steady confidence, or at least what I remember as assured, steady confidence. Where did it come from? Supportive parents? A stable, comfortable home and academic life? Mostly supportive teachers, at least in the subjects that mattered? Easier, less open-ended day-to-day tasks with tangible goals and endpoints? Did it come from not having yet experienced a pileup of history of failure? a lack of exposure to criticism? not yet having experienced or named sexism and the various usual injustices? Was it just a quality of being a teenager, some level of blindness to failure or criticism—social skills sufficiently underdeveloped to not notice or care about anyone’s opinion of me or have my own real opinion or awareness of myself? Did I simply not have an awareness of the distance between myself and the person I wanted to be? Or was the person I wanted to be sufficiently vague or shrouded in distant adulthood to be beyond comparison? Did being a child make my shortcomings easier for me to accept? Or was it perhaps something more positive: a healthier attitude about failure, or something that gave me the perspective to not be wobbled by it? Was it the constant, hovering presence of a professional goal that reached beyond any one person or subgoal, large enough and far enough away that it could be reached by wiggling around any steps I missed? Was it my many, many hobbies, giving me something other than my career to invest my heart into? Was it the presence and support of family and friends who I felt truly knew me?—in which case, was it the ability to talk through setbacks or negative experiences or my perception of another person’s judgement, again and again and again, to several separate people? or was it the knowledge that here, in this place where I am safe, are people who love me, even knowing me? Perhaps knowing that there are people who consistently see me and consistently love me cause feeling otherwise unloved or unseen to become bearable, any other person’s opinion or moods not quite as important. Or is the problem with self-worth during a PhD the concentration of responsibility for evaluation into a far smaller number of people, sometimes just one, often for an entire six years? In that case, it should be important to de-densify that authority—introduce more mentors, more authority figures, preferably some of them supportive to balance out any overweighed trauma from the others.
One idea that has been causing me particular dissonance is that high school me seemed to have time for everything. She filled up the school day with nonstop classes, cramming more classes where there were supposed to be study halls or lunch periods, missing a few days a week of easier classes to cram even more classes in where they already literally couldn’t fit. But I don’t remember homework or classes being my whole life, or even most of it. My memories are mostly in between classes (gossiping, so much gossiping, holding hands, making out in the hallway—horrifyingly embarrassing to think of now) or, especially, before and after school. A lot of my social life was in Science Olympiad—more gossiping, learning to use power tools (and hot glue and gorilla glue and gorilla tape), building tiny cars and water clocks and wooden airplanes I was so proud of—, starting in eighth grade and ending in eleventh, when I left high school. I was obsessed (obsessed) with getting the team to Nationals (I didn’t—we didn’t, and I cried on the last bus ride home from States). I kayaked multiple days a week and most of the weekend many weekends, especially in the not-freezing seasons. On top of that my family went on near constant adventures, skiing and biking and hiking and weekend camping trips around Pennsylvania. I also remember long nights coding personal projects, working on my first attempt(s) at a blog, trying to learn to sew clothes, baking experiments like that handful of times I made phyllo dough from scratch. And then my obsession with photography, going on what I called photography expeditions, then spending hours and hours editing photos of butterflies or trees or sunsets or the moon and adding a color-coordinated border and uploading to deviantART and talking with strangers online about my photographs and their photographs and about photography in general. And, of course, constantly AIM-ing with my friends, dissecting and analyzing crushes and homework and teachers and goals—this not including the hour a day dedicated to phone calls with boyfriends or prospective boyfriends or the time spent vaguely hanging out/loitering on school property or playing hide-and-seek tag after dark on Fridays in the park on the way home from school (that and another form of tag on the actual playground equipment right when it got just dark enough for someone to get injured on playground equipment but yet not dark enough to make hide-and-seek extra spooky).
There definitely wasn’t actually enough time: I cut class or slept through class or got sick and missed class constantly, at least once a week, which must have been an awful rollercoaster for my parents and a ridiculous mess for my teachers to watch and try to grapple with year after year after year. I would pull all-nighter to get work done, only to fall asleep and miss class and not turn in the work I did anyway. Then turn work in late; then probably fall behind, though I don’t actually remember ever being behind. Then do it again. (The trick was to get into just enough trouble to get Saturday school, rather than several far less productive detentions, but not enough trouble to warrant an even less productive in-school suspension.)
And yet I remember this time, and my time at MIT right after it, as remarkably productive, even though I definitely spent far more time on things that are not my job than I do now. Which is too bad—it seems I am working harder, but far less effectively, perhaps because I am working harder.
So here are some action items, borrowed from a happy childhood, to cultivate well-earned self-confidence for a better, less traumatizing, perhaps even empowering PhD/current career stage experience—maybe even a better, less traumatizing career overall.
Choose your mentors carefully. Have several, meet with them regularly, and solicit feedback. If your current career stage is structured such that you get feedback from only one person, or only one person’s feedback matters to your career, acquire additional mentors and do your best to dilute that one person’s power over you (even if they are supportive and that power feels like a good thing).
Develop a larger goal that reaches far beyond your current career stage—far enough away that a failure now or loss of support from any one person could be wiggled around to still reach the larger goal through another path.
Have family and/or friends who you feel truly and consistently see you, and truly and consistently love you for exactly who you are. Talk with those people often, and do the same for them.
Have hobbies that are important to you and give you fulfillment that is completely separate from your primary career.
Make (substantial) time for your hobbies and family and friends. Don’t cut them out because you think you will get more work done. You won’t, apparently. Work less.
Make good friends at work/in your lab to make the whole thing more bearable and hopefully even fun, at least sometimes. Spend more time talking with people, and listening to people, and being friendly.
Remember your younger self, who would be so proud of who you are and how far you have come.
Update: my favorite math teacher, who presided over Saturday school, has informed me that apparently while I did have Saturday school sometimes, I mostly showed up voluntarily, just for fun, to sit and work and be focused. (What a nerd.)
L. A. K. 