My day hasn't formally started, unless you count my attempts at going back to sleep as valid signs of moving, breathing life, but I'm delighted to announce that darya kinaray is no longer the solid option it was. The delight does not stem from my misfortunes(I'm not as sadistic as that yet) but it is caused by the triumph of the I-told-you-so voice inside my head.
Things never go well, and this has been the only constant factor in my life. Maybe I should start depending on the meanness of fortune, because it will always be there for me, unlike people. I can trust it.
My applications-I hope they are done by this point, I sent out the last one yesterday- cause me some amount of misery, but nowhere close to the maximum. I poured my heart and soul in them this time-whatever I have left of them at this point in life- and as usual it is going to be too little and too late. There are a thousand points I could have improved upon, and the application underneath all that is weak as usual. I don't know if I am going to talk about my dabbling in research today. Might as well.
Applications do demand a lot of time, and I fear I wrote a stupid statement as usual, did not tweak it according to the faculty/group, and then I am a boring candidate ultimately. Somewhere in March 2019 I sent a frantic email to W. about how I cannot get in anywhere, and what he would advise. Communication is futile and he replied in his matter-of-fact manner that if I did research with someone somewhere it would improve my chances. I had a nice cabin in ISE tower at that point and a job where all my bosses respected my analytical skills. By contrast, most people I work with now would rate me 3/10 on average. Spurned by the idea that I wanted what I wanted, I got up and ran here and there, and initially made some headway. People in academia thought I seemed a good candidate, but they wanted me to leave my job and work full time with them, in exchange for money that would be enough to cover my taxi fare and some cups of coffee, but not all.
Buoyed up by the idea of being someone who could turn away everything-shudder of shudders, money-away, I got up and left, and was on my way to join a lab where I would have tweaked FPGA code to detect fish most likely when I was snatched up by an interesting character. I spent some interesting months, first in a basement and then on an upper floor, but interesting as you must know by now is a loaded adjective. Very loaded, to be precise. It was whirlwind and tenuous and unstable as such things tend to be. There was a new goalpost every monday night, and of course I don't thrive in unstable situations. The guy has a heart that is good in places, and I had a very fun visit to the northern area with the whole team, but power corrupts men like nothing else. His bipolar blew up and it was decidedly not fun. I witnessed people getting hurt and then my turn came. My parents were disappointed by my meekness; they thought they had taught me to stand up to the world.
What caused me no small amount of consternation was the fact that these people vastly underestimated me. Right now I am pretty dumb with an unbelievably short short-term memory and I can't parse a line of mathematical symbols to save my life, but people usually tell me that I need to work hard for a couple of years and maybe something will come out of it, a publication or something at the end, and it irks me no end. For one thing, I don't have that kind of time in my life. For another, I cannot work on a single thing for two years straight. For the third, I find this insulting.
So I read up on stuff and did some work, but obviously it is of low quality, and hard work does not come naturally to me. My periods of stability are very rare and I cannot produce passable work without them. The mornings when I get up and feel at peace with the world come but occasionally; the evenings when I can devote all my attention to words are few and far-between. I do not have a solid recommender and thus I fear my applications are as stupid these year as they have been in 2017, 2018 and 2019 and going to meet the same fate, the unchanging and unrelenting wall of 'we are sorry to inform you'. The money they cost me this time weighs heavily on my mind too, for I could have bought lots and lots of beautiful shoes with it, and that could have served some purpose. My applications all fall into the void without creating any impact anywhere.
I think I sent 14 this time. Not a very interesting experiment. I probably should stay away from gradcafe. I can not compete with the world and will never try in the future. But out of practical concerns, I have to chase my recommenders and make sure that they submit all my letters everywhere. It is no fun. I am sure they hate me at this point.
I lounge in my lawn in the morning these days, and have become a half baked cookie as a result. I can look forward to Sep, but pretty sure it is going to be a big disappointment as always.
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