coldhearted scientist وداد

I am of course tired of writing about academic advice and about Reeducation. I feel I have said everything I could say, and that anything new I could say would take time to write that I would rather use for almost anything else – academic work, housework, recreation.

My perception for the week, though, is that the reason I do not relate to academic advice, even when it is true, is that it is all about discipline. It seems there are all these people learning to have discipline for the first time. Academic advice is also all about learning to have a good time, since it seems that the same people who are learning about discipline are also learning to have a good time.

I feel oppressed by this because these aren’t the things I need to learn. I know them, but the work I am doing is at a deeper level: I am still teaching myself that I have the right to live as I did before Reeducation – before I learned that to work in a disciplined way was too “controlled,” and that to take time off was too “decadent.”

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In Reeducation one could not be a grownup, and one deserved no respect. Not being allowed to respect or trust oneself, it was hard to have faith in one’s research program. It was also difficult to justify the energy both work and play take. I still have difficulty remembering there is no Reeducator standing behind me, ready to crush me with a hammer if I inadvertently begin doing anything of my own, on my own. I am making a concerted effort to keep this in mind, all the time.

I am convinced that the unrelenting stream of advice on how to become more disciplined is not the answer to everything. What if the question is whether you deserve to be doing what you are doing? whether this is what you want to be doing? whether you believe in what you are doing? In my circles, these were always the questions that could not be asked, or were only asked for purposes of sowing self doubt. But what if those are the relevant questions? Why is the answer given to them so often an answer about how to get things done?

Perhaps it does not apply to anyone but me. People have always said I am unlike the other professors. But I do not think it is further discipline and exhortation one needs. I think one needs information on how things work, and also license to do what one wants, do one’s will, and trust one’s own instincts and perceptions.

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I always felt that the danger in doing the things one needs to do to survive and do well was that if one were discovered doing them, one would be killed for it. I knew that was an irrational situation but it appeared to be the double bind to which I was destined in life.

For a few years I was so situated that it was no longer true. Then Reeducation assured me that it actually was – something which, of course, also put me in situations where it was so in fact.

My daily yoga now is to do my will – and also, to remember that there is nobody poised with a hammer at my back.

Axé.