coldhearted scientist وداد

This is one more of my morose posts, designed to shed pain so that I can move on in life. Why I am in this degree of pain it is hard to tell, but it is as though I had murdered someone.

The phrase “you have no power over me any more” helps a great deal. I have been called intimidating, selfish and threatening a great deal in my life but I think it was projection. You have no power over me any more.

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New Kid on the Hallway sent me some information about law school that confirmed everything I thought, and was called mean and egotistical for thinking, years ago when I first tried to enroll. Namely: yes, in order to get a good job you should go to a good program. Especially if you are over 30, 40, and so on. I do not know why people who would have said that about the PhD could not see it about the JD.

“You can just go to any law school, little girl, any law school will get you a license, stop being so picky.” “You are 35 and too old to get a job.” Well, of course, if you go to just any school, you might not get a job, is all I really have to say to that.

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1. “Intimidating.” Girls, I was taught, had it as our duty to be invaded and trampled upon. The perfect girl would be like a beautiful marble floor. And so yes, I am worried about this and the reason I am never a crime victim, even in dangerous places, is the way I stare people down. I look like a beautiful marble floor so it surprises people when I do this; that does make me confusing, yes.

2. “Selfish.”  Having views, going to college, not making it a point to suffer. The extreme egotism of being in one’s late twenties and not tied down. We were supposed to avoid being tied down in our teens, but by the time we hit our twenties it was our duty.

3.“Threatening.” Being competent and attractive and having views and also multiple talents not just for hobbies, but for professions. Not needing to be resigned or trapped.

Note: Do you have the impression I have felt stared at and criticized quite a lot, and that I have become sensitive to it? I do. I think I suffer from the self doubt imposed by gender oppression, and I wish I had acquired better tools for perceiving and resisting this earlier in life.

Coda: In this series of posts on the nature of my debilitating sense of guilt I have been struck by the prevalence of the theme that my being talented hurts others, or my being happy hurts others. I have been envied a lot, it seems.

Related: I cannot leave academia yet for financial reasons so I have to make more of it than I have. I have only spent about two or three years of my time since getting the PhD doing the things I would like to do, in ways I would have recommended. This was not at all according to plan, but it was how things turned out. There was the horrible first year, and then the year I went on the market; after that, the year I moved. Then a good fourth year, and two terrible years of Reeducation, then three years of limbo, and then my incarceration here where, essentially, I am attempting to expiate my perceived sins.

Perhaps if I decide these were not sins after all, I could make more of the present situation. I have tried many times to make more of it tout court, but what drag on me are the ideas that I should be happy and grateful and resigned, and also that I must expiate the sins of having gone to college and graduate school as I did, and also of having not fit into the real life of professors and of having wanted to do other things — things less ethereal, things tainted with commercialism, things that would betray the values with which I was raised and the hopes invested in me.

Wrong: According to some influential persons my choice of colleges was wrong, although I enjoyed it and did very well. It was wrong of me to go to graduate school, too, although once again, I enjoyed it and did well and it was very good for me personally. The administration at my first job also felt I had gone to the wrong graduate program — it produced research oriented intellectuals, and indicated to women that they could do a man’s work.

According to Reeducation, my research oriented job at the time was wrong because having a PhD was wrong. And then according to others, the alternatives I came up with were also wrong; all of the things which interest me are wrong because, when it comes down to it, they are things only men should do — or they are activities which require confidence and verve, and having these is wrong.

Axé.