I recently stumbled across this blog and, in particular, this post. Although I had seen this optical illusion before (additional info here), its more... Shall we say... metaphysical?... meaning had escaped me. As you can see, there are two orange dots surrounded by differently sized gray dots. The orange dots appear to be different sizes when in reality they are the same size, or identical. This, I think, can be a useful analogy for how someone sees themself in relation to the world. Allow me to explain by means of personal example...
As can be inferred from my blog posts, this year I am applying to graduate school. The people who know me reading this are aware of the fact that I received my undergraduate degree from a prestigious university, where high-brow academics are of the utmost importance and Nobel Laureates are not in want and wander the streets asking for pocket change. We'll call it XYZ University.
Those of you who knew me while I attended XYZ University know how miserable I was during my time there for various reasons. At the height of my agony, I took almost a full academic year off to be at home and seriously considered transferring to Local State School where most of my high school friends and boyfriend of the time went. Ultimately, I decided to finish up at XYZ University because having a diploma from there would be more impressive than having one from Local State.
Or so I thought.
In the aftermath of my disaster of a collegiate run, I now regret my decision to finish at XYZ, and question the choice of going there at all. It seriously wrecked my self-esteem.
I had been high school valedictorian. Aced my Advanced Placement tests. Received community scholarships-- I thought I could hang with the best of them. But when I finally encountered the best of them, I was completely intimidated by their training, their accomplishments, their connections... The shock of coming from a small, dying, industrial city where perhaps 20% of a given graduating high school class go on to receive a bacchelor's in addition to being the first in my nuclear family to get a post-secondary education was too much for me to handle. I lost track of who I was and had been.
And I crashed. Hard. My grades suffered. It was a negative positive-feedback-loop. Whereas in high school I was a dominating personality in all my classes, known for speaking my mind to a fault, I assumed my new peers saw me as I now saw myself--a naïve country-bumpkin who couldn't solve a simple quadratic equation should one land in front of her. And this perception of myself got played out in my grades and coursework when I was too intimidated to talk to faculty or classmates.
Don't get me wrong. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to go to XYZ University, and I made great friends and love my city. I certainly wouldn't have had the same opportunities to do undergraduate research and realize my love of science. But as much as the message was shoved down our throats during orientation, a degree from XYZ University is not a golden ticket to Your Next Step, especially if you have a crap GPA. This has been made all-too-clear to me now that I'm going through the process of applying to PhD programs. I have great research experience and (I assume) great recommendation letters, but I'm being rejected from top universities left and right for what I assume is the completely underwhelming way I look on paper. [It's been difficult to stomach, though it is what I expected.]
What I think would have been much more impressive to a graduate admissions committee would be to have a good, solid GPA from a second or third tier university plus a much healthier sense of self-confidence and awareness and whatever extra-curriculers I may have fit into the time I didn't spend lying in bed crying and chastising myself for not being smarter/more outgoing/more involved. [Of course, I was seriously depressed, and I can't say for sure that that's not biological and wouldn't have happened no matter where I went.]
I realize now that it was a mistake to go blindly into my situation at XYZ University, thinking it was the best possible decision, when I could easily have gone to and been happy at Local State School. Not because one is better than the other, but because I would have been surrounded by people who were more like me, and I wouldn't have felt as intimidated.... As small... And I just might have done better and been more productive. It might not have taken me a couple years to get back on the horse and find value in myself [I'm still struggling to convince myself I'm a worthwhile, intelligent, sentient being], and I might... Just might... Have been a little bit happier.
I guess it's too hard to say, and of course I don't know for sure. The point is: this optical illusion thing is a convenient metaphor for the issues I've been grappling with during my period of self-discovery. I was the same orange dot, the same person on the inside, in both of the trajectories my life could have taken-- XYZ University or Local State School. But being surrounded by big gray dots crowded me in and made me feel small. (Ok, I'm realizing this is an imperfect metaphor because I don't want to imply anyone at Local State would be a small dot compared to myself--definitely NOT implying that). The problem wasn't that I really was stupid or insignificant or what-have-you, the problem was the way I perceived myself in relation to the people around me.
So. While I'm disappointed by the rejection letters from the big name graduate programs, I'm trying to take this new perspective and make the best of the situation. Yes, I might not get to work with the professors I wanted to at Stanford... Or talk to Roger Tsien about his Nobel Prize at UCSD... But maybe I'll thrive under the conditions of a second or third tier university and go on to do a fabulous postdoc. Or maybe I'll get my PhD and do something totally different. Maybe I'll turn into a big, purple horse. Only time will tell.
For now, I'm just trying to reclaim a healthy sense of self-perception and keep myself sane.
... Anyway here's that optical illusion again, just because it's pretty and so cool:
You deserve a cookie if you made it through all that.
