I was at a formal dinner with another 3 cohort phd students. One of them is a postdoc who is financially supported by our the government of our home country but he is basically using that money to travel and play around. He speaks his mother tongue rather than English whenever he can and he has no pursuit of doing research. Another girl, I would call A, has the same Phd supervisor as mine. She attended the best schools all her life but she is shallow in terms of academic knowledge, nonetheless she knows how to connect and advertise herself. During the dinner I knew that she is going to Harvard for a year of exchange.
I was so tortured by that dinner. The postdoc was just boring. He said nothing during the whole dinner. The A girl again is in the best college in our university and during the dinner she kept rumbling about, my college this, my college that. To be honest, nothing interesting, it is like oh my college has plastic candles not real candles on dinner tables, my college serves 1 dessert not 2, I mean who cares? She cannot say three sentences without mentioning her college. It just makes me sick that even a person like her could cheat her way through all the famous programs in the world. It is just so unfair! I first I thought I was being jealous, but now I don’t think so. I never feel jealous of people who got real talent and who deserve the best things they’ve got. I would be happy for them and admire them. But not this A girl.
She knows a way to bluff I think. If you are a layman of our field and don’t know what she is talking about, you probably think she is so great because she speaks so confidently as if she knows her things well. But if you know the field, you would tell that she is not well read. Like last week, she and I held a workshop together. I invited a world-famous scholar and this scholar really gets her style, she is really tough and strict, and she cares about arguments and accuracy of her theory. This A girl originally used this scholar’s theory to solve the problem in her research, but during the presentation, she deleted that part. She told me that she was afraid that the scholar would criticize her… I mean if only she knows that she did not deserve all the shiny titles she got and keep a low key role, I would not be that furious.
During the dinner, I literally said nothing, even though my supervisor was there too. I cannot even pretend to be friendly. When the girl threw me some questions, I just pretended smiling and gave a very short answer, like it’s nice, I ‘ve no idea. I know she can tell that I don’t want to be friend with her. But that’s the best I can do.
The dinner is so torturing because first the postdoc’s case shows that the country financially supported a person like him, and lots of students better than him don’t get a chance to study abroad. It is such unwise use of money and bad decisions for the so called experts in our home country scholarship committee. Second, a person like A girl can cheat her way through all the famous programs without feeling shame about it at all.
Am I being very cynical? I hate that dinner but somehow I blame myself for not behaving in a friendly manner. I cannot hide my feelings. What would you do if you were me?
2 comments
>first I thought I was being jealous, but now I don’t think so
based on what? After your dinner and wrote this 6 paragraph post about why you think each of the other students didn’t deserve what they had. This feeling consumed you so much that the dinner felt like “torture” and you withdrew into yourself.
You sound like a deeply envious person. I think most people would be annoyed with that girl. When I was in college I had to interact with a lot of exhausting/arrogant people like her. It’s normal to feel jealousy, but once you fixate on it like this it starts to become unhealthy. This whole “I’m simply recognizing how unjust it is” thing just seems like deflection or a way to convince yourself that it isn’t jealousy.
>What would you do if you were me?
I would find a therapist and focus on myself. Jealousy is a completely normal thing to feel, especially so in academics, but you should work on how you respond to that feeling. A therapist could help you identify when you’re having these feelings in the moment and help you work out some healthy ways to deal with it.
Now I see why I should spend more time focusing on myself. Not because I have realized my mistake, but because I see it does not make any sense to feel unfair for others. To be fair, she has nothing that I need to feel envious of. The educational background and resources I have are comparable to hers. What I am furious about is that I know many other students who are truly knowledgeable and hardworking than her but have no opportunities to enjoy the privilege she has. That’s why I feel the world is so unfair.
But now I see that when I am trying to voice this unfairness out, I will only be understood as “you sound deeply envious”. That’s the funny thing. People would rather believe what other people sound not what other people are, the deception of language, that’s why the girl can fool around and gets her way through the system through her language rather than ability.
Thank you for your answer. it lets me see that there is no point in this. yeah, why not spend time perfecting myself in this meritocracy society where one’s own success is the most important thing, why care about unfairness ? saying it out will only render myself being a loser who sound deeply envious.