Not as Smart

The other day I read my psych evaluation from two years ago. I was a mess at the time and my responses to the test questions would have made me cringe were it not for the fact that I have learnt to be kinder and less judgemental. But there was a line in the report that really stuck in my craw. It said my level of ambition was far higher than the creative resources of my personality. That was the psychologist's intepretation of an ink-blot test and some of the tests seemed like vodoo. While drawing inferences about the mental and emotional make-up of a person after spending just a few hours with them is a fraught exercise, this blog is not about the merits and demerits of psych evaluations. It is about how someone else's perception of us could be so different from our own. Maybe a few months ago, being told that my ambition outstrips my potential would have hurt me. But the past few months of PhD life have been a chastening experience and I am much more open to criticism.