* just burned my hand on a potato. this is emblematic of life absent Y during the day. or in other words; when I don't go out I have to engage in such high risk tasks as fixing my own lunch.

I realized that it takes courage to become an expert in one's field.

Up until now it had been my mistaken impression that choosing a field to excel in would just tell you something, not altogether positive, about the expert's character; that it means a certain squarish tendency, but one which goes hand in hand with an ability to delve into the minutiae of a particular field of interest.

So, in a sense, I always appreciated these people as studious. And my mind had other variations for studious that sound less flattering: like narrow-minded, slavish, neatpicky and what have you. For myself, as my idea of the opposite of such people I reserved words that were my idea of antonyms of studious, for example, broad minded, fruitful, creative, etc. to suggest that those other people are a paritcular brand of ignorant, because their fascination with a singular stem of knowledge meant that they simply had no time to be interested in other things.

Now I've come to realize that in order to do what they do you need to believe in your ability to be THE expert, that there are high stakes to this approach and an admirable level of confidence. If you do achieve this goal you deserve appreciation for a remarkable project, but even if you don't, then at least you single out yourself as someone who was willing to set that mark for himself. Sorry, herself (and by the way, I no longer think this particular brand of academic affirmative action is idiotic).