I did send my revised proposal off to my advisor last week, but I have heard nothing yet. He had papers to grade but assures me that I am approaching the top of his list. I have deadlines for funding applications in a week and a half, and I have to get my proposal filed by then.
On one hand, I am concerned because I expect that I will have to do more revisions. I did not add the chapter he suggested that I add, and even though I intended to work on that part while he reviewed the rest, it is hard for me to do it until I get word back from him that, indeed, I have to do it. So I will probably have to do more revisions (quickly!) and then circulate it to the rest of the committee and then file it by next Friday. Doesn't seem likely to happen.
On the other hand, I don't think I'll get the funding I am applying for because I know who else is applying. Maybe that's an inferiority complex. And maybe that's just realistic. But either way, I don't really even want to apply because I feel like I'm wasting my time. There is another deadline in April, and I actually do feel okay about that one. I just don't want to rush through next week trying to pull it all together and turn in less-than-impressive materials.
Maybe if I'd heard from my advisor by now I'd feel differently. But I doubt it. And I'm not upset with him because it's my fault that I took so long to produce the revisions.
And I'm having another case of "not smart enough"--not fishing for compliments or reassurance here, just expressing that feeling. It creeps in from time to time, and based on my Google referrals, I am not alone. Of all the other phrases that bring people here, the words "not smart enough" show up most often on the referrer list.
Blah.
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2 comments:
Good news #1: once you do get everyone's signature on your proposal, a)you can speed pass it through our DGS if you ask nicely and b)OGS really processes it fast (I got my admission to candidacy w/in like 3 days of submitting it to them!).
Good news #2: I often feel "not smart enough"...I sometimes even feel not grown up enough, not socially adept enough, *and* not competitive enough...I feel these things more than sometimes actually. The thing that makes me feel a bit better is knowing that we're in a really nurturing department, and that's NOT always a given in grad school. I've heard horror stories of places that just make students go crazy, cut-throat places that have mid-program cuts to weed out the least competitive students. And, I've experienced programs that just don't do anything to create a comraderie among students or b/t students and faculty. Our program is unique b/c of its ability to do just that! While I'm aware that I'm competing against some really smart people for funding - and of course I want to get funding awards - I simultaneously feel like there's nobody else I'd rather lose out to than those people! I think that when the day comes that you or I (or any other grad student, scholar, professor) loses that feeling of "not smart enough" (or any of its variants), that's the day that our work and our thinking loses just a bit of its quality and edge. Thinking of it this way makes me thankful for that self-consciousness.
It's not that losing would be such a blow to my ego. It's that I'm really not interested in participating in the whole process because I don't see much point. It would be a lot of effort and stress and work with no pay-off.
And you're right that feeling "not smart enough" is normal and can be productive, but right now it is combined with dread of yet another task I don't want to complete right now, so I'm feeling very...blah.
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