Tumblr crosspost (15 July 2019)
Sep. 18th, 2019 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineAn anon said:
When you get this, list 5 things that you are currently good at but want to get even better at! The midpoint between listing your present good points and listing your future wishes. Then if you want, send this to 5 people you follow!
I replied:
Well, thank you, anon.
1) I’m okay at research in general, but unless I’m very passionate about it, I can be pretty undisciplined and haphazard when it comes to secondary sources—a prof who likes me recently noted on a paper that I hadn’t bothered with anything after 2004 in an active field. The research was fine as far as it went, just should have gone farther. And, well, yeah.
2) Secondary research aside, I’m pretty good with writing about primary sources. (The writing+primary source interpretation got me an A on the paper mentioned above, for instance.) I’m not … like, peerless or anything as a writer, and I think I could definitely be more coherent, focused, and careful with metaphors, and it’d help if I didn’t constantly do things at the last minute. But I’m reasonably effective at conveying my opinions.
3) I’m also quite confident when it comes to my opinions, and I think that confidence comes across in my writing, which is (mostly) good. But it’d be nice if I could figure out a way to extend the confidence to … um, any other part of my life?
4) I have nice handwriting, in the aesthetic sense, but not in the ‘easily comprehensible’ sense. (Shout-out to the poor professors who graded my handwritten MA exams.) It’s a small thing, but I’d like it to be easier to read.
5) IRL I’m good at staying calm; in particular, I don’t easily get angry, and it makes me uncomfortable when I am angry. Honestly, it feels like a waste of energy and time, as well as upsetting me. I do resent things to the point of irrationality, though. Since low-key resentment can bubble on without too much interference, I can be a somewhat irritable person even though I almost never lose my temper.
When you get this, list 5 things that you are currently good at but want to get even better at! The midpoint between listing your present good points and listing your future wishes. Then if you want, send this to 5 people you follow!
I replied:
Well, thank you, anon.
1) I’m okay at research in general, but unless I’m very passionate about it, I can be pretty undisciplined and haphazard when it comes to secondary sources—a prof who likes me recently noted on a paper that I hadn’t bothered with anything after 2004 in an active field. The research was fine as far as it went, just should have gone farther. And, well, yeah.
2) Secondary research aside, I’m pretty good with writing about primary sources. (The writing+primary source interpretation got me an A on the paper mentioned above, for instance.) I’m not … like, peerless or anything as a writer, and I think I could definitely be more coherent, focused, and careful with metaphors, and it’d help if I didn’t constantly do things at the last minute. But I’m reasonably effective at conveying my opinions.
3) I’m also quite confident when it comes to my opinions, and I think that confidence comes across in my writing, which is (mostly) good. But it’d be nice if I could figure out a way to extend the confidence to … um, any other part of my life?
4) I have nice handwriting, in the aesthetic sense, but not in the ‘easily comprehensible’ sense. (Shout-out to the poor professors who graded my handwritten MA exams.) It’s a small thing, but I’d like it to be easier to read.
5) IRL I’m good at staying calm; in particular, I don’t easily get angry, and it makes me uncomfortable when I am angry. Honestly, it feels like a waste of energy and time, as well as upsetting me. I do resent things to the point of irrationality, though. Since low-key resentment can bubble on without too much interference, I can be a somewhat irritable person even though I almost never lose my temper.