Opening up old wounds

Ugh...today was a rough day. It started out fine with testing a particularly interesting undergrad. I miss those days in undergrad when I used to surround myself with interesting characters and talk into the wee hours of the morning. When people grow older, they seem to lose that sense of carefree silliness. Responsibility sets in, and conversation seems to lose it's spark. Anyhow, that's not what I wanted to talk about.

I wandered into the kitchen area, looking for leftover free food from yesterday's faculty/staff luncheon (yes, I raided the food yesterday; what do you expect? I'm a grad student.). But, I found none. Instead, I ended up talking to one of the new faculty members who's office was nearby. I've been paying close attention to this faculty member (as I do with everyone) and I suspected that he was sizing up the graduate students. He's the one who called me smart, if you remember that post (I don't remember it, otherwise I'd link to it. But, it's pretty self-explanatory.). Well, I also suspected that he was trying to get me to work with him, perhaps because he wants to work with smart grad students. I, on the other hand, was not so keen to be tied down on someone else's line of research. If you remember, I sometimes get confused and think I'm already a professor. I like being here because I have a lot of freedom to do my own thing, as long as it doesn't require funding, then I'm a wee bit restricted in what research I can do.

As it turns out, New Prof, (yes, we'll call him New Prof, because, well, he's new) likes to be very candid, and cut through the pleasantries, and straight into the heart of things. So we talked about the "just-do-what-I-need-to-do-to-get-my-Ph.D." grad student mentality around here and the lack of an academic culture of intellectual curiosity. Sigh...these are the kinds of things that foster the ugliness of academic pride and egotism. But, I fell right into it. It was also quite clear that New Prof wanted to push my buttons and take the conversation in directions that, mercifully, no one else around here has done. Everyone else has taken my return at face value and not questioned me about why I came back. Either they are not interested, or they have satisfied themselves with the explanation that Cognitive Neuroscience was too "technical" for me. But, New Prof saw through everything and suspected that there was something more going on under the surface. He's quite right, of course, let's just say that it was under unhappy circumstances that I left my previous program.

So now my emotions are very raw. As I walked out of that office, everything from the past came flooding back, and I had a hard time remaining composed for my next class. I sat through the class without saying a word, just nodding and shifting around in my seat, hoping class would be over soon, and I could go get food and find solace in my office.

But, I was right about one thing. New Prof did want me to work with him, even though he actually told me he thought I was smarter than him, and that it would be a real challenge for him to advise me (strange thing for a prof to say, he's not a typical prof, that's for sure). Well, he said he had plenty of funding for me to work with him. But, when I balked at the idea of working with him because, clearly, I want to do my own research, he said that I could just find something I wanted to do that fit into his area and it would be fine. I didn't take the bait, yet, but indicated that I would think about it.

I've been thinking about it, and I have a project in mind that needs funding, so I might propose it to him and see what he says. But, there's one stipulation...No more pushing my buttons!!!!!