Grad school, grad school, rah, rah, rah!
We’ve now come to the end of orientation week here in Nerdville. I feel swamped, overwhelmed, and surprisingly happy. I feel a lot of anxiety about doing well and working hard. I didn’t realize, during my tenure at Evil Corp, that there was a great deal of freedom in not really caring about how the work went. I didn’t want to get fired and I hate for people to be all disappointed in me, so it wasn’t like I didn’t complete tasks or anything - but I felt that the work itself had nothing to do with me in the sense that my ego wasn’t really caught up in it.
Those days are over.
On the other side of that is the sense that it matters. When I do something right I’ll feel really good about it and not just that I’ve checked off another task. I also like being surrounded by people I can be basically honest with. I like that. And everyone is friendly and they didn’t immediately sense that I don’t really belong there and I don’t really deserve to be doing something that I want to do. If I can just keep up the façade of legitimacy for twelve months, I’ll be through with no one the wiser.