Everyday I set my goals just a little higher than I can possibly achieve. My efforts are usually more than sufficient. Less often I even touch excellence. But sometimes, just for the sake of my sanity, I aim for mere mediocracy. I struggle just to try and catch up because I'm biting the dust and striving for perfection is a cruel joke. I used to be disgusted at incompetence but now I'm looking at the other side of the coin. Doing what you love even if you're no good at it. Like the proverbial bathroom singers. The inspiration for all that rhetoric is this...
I have landed myself into, or rather my advisor has thrust upon me, the daunting task of turning a regular amatuer peice of code into a more legible coherent Object Oriented Program (OOPs). Now this really is high school stuff. The problem is that in high school I was a biology student. And what about four years of college you might ask. Thats where the one-woman computer science faculty swims into the picture. I like to call her the Goldfish. Because her blinking saucer eyes and the effect of her lectures. None. The only thing I ever heard was the conviction filled "OK" after every phrase. If ever I was compelled to attend class, mostly out of courtesy, and having nowhere else to go, it was just as soothing as watching a goldfish blinking and mouthing words that will never reach a soul. I'm not saying she was a bad teacher. She came to class, graded exams, kicked classroom gamers out of the lab as per the duties of any associate professor. It was the mediocracy. The uninspired textbook lectures. She did her job, nothing more nothing less. And I can't quite bring myself to blame her for my lack of that one skill essential for any engineer. Coding. Maybe, like me, she was just doing the best she could from the confiines of her fishbowl.
Don't get me wrong. The only reason I'm setting presumably low targets right now is coz I gotta take it all one step at a time. I'd rather be an unwavering straight C donkey than a straight A quitter. I can't go straight from bathroom to broadway. I need to train first. And when I'm done learning, I'm gonna learn some more. Why would you settle for a fishbowl when you can have the whole damn ocean?
3 comments:
I've realized that the worst part about grad school is that just when you think you're over the obstacle and its smooth sailing, you discover that you've entered a mine field.
Who ever said slave labor did not exist in the US, hasn't met my advisor.
Here's to life as a grad student. No rest for the weary.
Hear hear!!
I so relate to your first paragraph!
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