An opening

Before I tell you the rest, you have to promise me one thing: you must believe the box is real. It is, see, and the only reason I'm not posting a picture is that one of my officemates came back in the evening and I was too embarrassed to take one in front of him.

The box is full of monographs and offprints and notes from long-dead projects of mine that I'd been hoping to resurrect. I shipped it out here back in January. It's been sitting unopened on my desk ever since; along with the oversized computer monitor, it makes a wonderful barricade. I can't be seen from the hallway. Arriving officemates generally don't realize I'm in until I click the mouse, or turn a page.

Why not open the box? There's a nice bookcase next to my desk where the books could go. Most of the contents are standard references—useful for others, too. But no one else brought out any books, and I'm embarrassed to be different. Plus I've felt safe behind my little wall.

Today there were lots of extra visitors to the institute. More reason than usual to hide. Late in the afternoon, though, one of the directors (the one who's found me hiding before) came in to talk; let's call him Professor Cactus. He started by telling me (very nicely) why my pathetic little thoughts on a few silly issues we'd talked about before were probably not worth considering further, but that wasn't why he was there.

He's writing a book, along with some of his former grad students, and wants me to join the project. He likes the course materials up on my web site, thinks I could do some good for the exposition, and, well, they need warm bodies, if a draft is going to get done this summer. (This summer?! Can I spend June in Vancouver? He'll be there. Um. We'll see.)

OH MY GOD THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER. I have been so jealous, watching him with his former students, wondering why—despite the efforts of many well-meaning institutions—I've never had a professional mentor I can trust. I'm still sort of resentful of my graduate advisor making me pull out of a book project with someone else my third year in grad school (it took me a whole lot more years to finish, anyway...). The material is fabu. I'll need to learn a lot, but I sort of think I might have something to offer.

WHAT IF I FUCK IT UP? You know, I don't think my scholarly career can really go any further down, in terms of isolation and stalled output.

Beaker made the point a few weeks ago that Professor Cactus might well have been the one who originally pulled my application from the pile—that he might feel like he has a bit of a stake in whether my semester out here is worth anything to anyone. Or perhaps Professor Cactus is simply as thoughtful of a guy as he appears to be with others.

He called in some of the others on the project. One of my first questions was, how will this differ from the recent books by Smith and Jones? The Jones book was rapidly dismissed, but Smith was not so simple. Did anyone have it around?

You can see where this is going, can't you? There was a copy of Smith's book in the box. I knew there was one.

So I opened the box.

Comments

[bitchphd]

Beautiful.

[cecily]

That's awesome... I hope it works out!

[Karen F.]

Oh, the WHAT IF I FUCK IT UP PART made me chuckle because it showed perfectionism rearing its ugly head. I'm in science, so usually I write journal articles based on our research, but I do write a review or a book chapter every other year or so. I have such a love/hate relationship with those articles. I'm so thrilled to be asked. It is an honor, and when I see a crappy review or book chapter I wonder why they didn't ask me for my opinion. But as soon as I am asked to write a review/book chapter my first thought is exactly that: WIIFIU! What if I forget to cite somebody? What if I'm the only one with my opinion and everyone else thinks it's crap? Ugh! Perfectionism. I gotta get over it some day.
-KarenF.
a scientist from a prestigious sweatshop.

[Moxie]

Dude.

[What Now?]

Congrats--how fabulous!

[Toronto Girl]

Dude --

You won't fuck it up. But I recognize the thought. I have let those thoughts really eff me up along the wway so now I try to think of them as baseballs coming at me: i just bat them out of the park. It doesn't always work but it helps as an image.

Toronto Girl

[Emma Jane]

Thank you all!

I think my fear of fucking up is not so much fear of doing a bad job: once I start, the perfectionism will kick in, and Professor Cactus will not be shy about communicating changes that need to be made. It's fear of simply never getting anything done at all. I'm reeeeeeaaaaaaally good at not working.