“Unless you’re cool in the Lord, you’re always going to be in competition.”
What Dad told me yesterday after I moaned to him about going to a party where I felt uncool and uninteresting, drab and plain white bread. Repressed, perpetually single white bread — with braces.
Oh, and then last night, I was out with a doctor friend and some friends from her research fellowship program, all of whom are married doctors about my age or a several years older. After I finished telling them what I study, one of them asked me in a kindly voice, “Are you an undergrad?” WTF! We all either laughed it off or played it as a compliment, but I saw it as a judgment on my general lack of polish (and braces), and nothing to do with the smoothness of my complexion.
Sometimes I feel like grad school is a never-ending competition to see who’s smartest, who’s making the fastest progress (now that most of my acquaintances are candidates, unlike me), who’s got an in with profs, who’s wittiest, and, around certain people, who knows the most about obscure arts and culture.
I really don’t know if the people who seem to “beat” me are also competing, or if the competition is all the creation of my tormented, insecure mind. (Probably somewhere in between.) I just know that this is one rat race I want to get the hell out of.
Thank goodness for Paul, that trembling, suffering, shat-upon apostle, who decided to know nothing but Jesus Christ, and him crucified.
“Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the follow of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (I Cor. 20-31)
September 27, 2009 at 11:12 pm
But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (I Cor. 20-31)
God has chosen me because I’m weak. messed up, rebellious? What idiot would believe that? The idiot Saint Paul! God loves to play jokes.
September 30, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Yes, thank God for Paul and his words. I’ll never forget how much these words meant to me when I was an undergrad at the University of Texas (Austin.) It was 1963, UT had three times as many students as my little hometown. I wondered if the things I had been taught in Levelland were really true. And God graciously gave me these words. They were true then, and they get “truer” every day.
September 30, 2009 at 9:40 pm
I never knew that, Rosemary. Thanks for sharing.
October 2, 2009 at 11:18 am
Wise words, indeed!
October 5, 2009 at 9:43 am
Focus on what you’re passionate about, not what the others around you are doing. We tear ourselves up comparing our progress to others, but the important thing is whether or not we’re pursuing something we’re interested in.
I’m kinda fed up with egos these days. I watched one potential friendship implode because egos got in the way, and another grad student reject a potentially good time because she was too worried about what people would think of her. Our Bible Study imploded b/c a lot of people couldn’t handle smart women talking about religion (one of many reasons–our exploration just wasn’t for a lot of people as well).
Grad school is this wonderful time when we have immense free time and are surrounded by interesting folk (including you), but we (including me) ruin it because we’re so worried about the past and the future and comparing ourselves to others. Live in the moment, for those meetings like the one with your student and for the exciting tid bits from your research–and share that excitement with others. It is infectious.