Little compliments make a big difference

Just when I was a little down on myself for my perceived difficulty with writing, I received a nice compliment about my writing in an email today. Oh, how well-timed...

I really must share, not because I'm trying to puff myself up on my blog, but because it illustrates what a coincidence it is that last weekend I felt bad about how difficult it is for me to write and then immediately received a compliment about my writing on Monday morning. It's as if God is orchestrating the little things to keep me from beating myself up.

Here's the highlight of the email from the IRB reviewer about the proposal I wrote: "I must say how much I enjoyed reading your proposal. What an interesting study and so very well conceptualized."

The reviewer thought my advisor wrote the proposal, but my advisor replied with this: "Thank you for the kind words, but my graduate student, Kiki, did most of the writing and deserves all the credit!"

What a wonderful advisor I have! And what a nice thing for that reviewer to say. Everybody needs a little compliment every now and then and this one came just when I needed it.