🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <120@phoenix.UUCP> jevans@phoenix.UUCP (Janet Evans) writes:
<about a friend of hers who is afraid of being "found out" as an
inadequate grad student>

I regret that I can't pull the title of a book I glanced at in a mall
out of my flakey memory.  The author's main thesis seemed to be that
people who have a history of achievement are prone to be afraid of
being exposed as a faker/failure.  After all, you don't really deserve
to win big unless you _suffer_ for it.  You can probably find the book
by poking around the self-improvement/feelgood section of a slick
bookstore if this doesn't provoke someone else into posting the
title.  (I'm sorry, but I spent less than five minutes flipping
pages....) (It might have been _The Impostor <something>_....)

>He went through school at an abnormally high pace, so I suspect he's never
>really had problems like this before.  

Exactly!  When I was an overconfident undergraduate I really felt like
an idiot when my average dropped the term I tried taking two languages
simultaneously.  If you're used to school not being a challenge, it
really boggles you the first time you hit something that makes you
work for a change.  And by the time that happens, you can easily be so
close to graduation that you're tempted to try to bruteforce a
solution, rather than taking the time off you deserve.

If your friend galloped through school to this point, it might be a
good idea for him to _consider_ taking a term or year off, travelling,
or whatever his relaxation of choice might be.  To be a graduate
student, he must have been doing school more or less continuously for
_sixteen_ years or so.  He owes himself a break!  And it seems to me
that his emotions are trying to tell him.

It also occurs to me that he might be working up a case of separation
anxiety -- for more than 16 years his world has been a series of
classrooms. And now he's really close to being forced to give up
student status -- how many post-grad degrees can you get?  Could this
be part of it?

>(I doubt he's suicidal, by the way;
>I think he looks down on that way out of problems.)

That doesn't necessarily prevent someone from trying suicide.  In
fact, if you define suicide as the weakling's way out, and
simultaneously find impulses toward death in your mind, this doesn't
exactly help your self-image.  ("Only a gutless wonder would consider
suicide." "But I'm considering suicide!" "Then go ahead, the world
doesn't need gutless wonders." Amazing how we use our values to tie
our heads in knots, isn't it....)

I'd suggest that he find some way of opting out for a few days (or
longer, if he chooses -- even much longer!).  I've dropped out and
returned to school with considerable benefit from the non-academic
learning.  He might even consider working for a while (does he have
any non-computer interests he could market for a more complete change
of pace?) But the most important thing (I think) you can do for him is
to let him know that you care, and that he's not the only person to be
close to the end of his studies to be nervous about whether or not
he's prepared to face what we laughingly (cryingly?) call the REAL
WORLD.

				STella Calvert

		Do what thou wilt -- not just a good idea, 

				it's the law!

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