Translucence

I felt my face heat – I blush when I get nervous – as I sat at my desk, gathering materials and rehearsing my hypotheses and questions. I stacked my papers and other documents neatly and checked the clock again. I didn’t want to be too early, but I also didn’t want to make him wait. I was not giving a talk or attending anything that would require such tense energy.

I was going to talk to a faculty member.

I do that all the time though – I go ask questions and offer ideas, do some work, help write papers. It’s my job. I like doing it.

But, OK. There are people who do what I do. Only much, much better. They have a new habitat – it’s shiny and pretty – and I’m intimidated by them and their aggressive ways of imparting tremendous knowledge. They just scare me for some reason – I don’t fit in with them even though I should be one of them and it makes me feel badly so I try to avoid them if possible and I mostly succeed. (Deep breath.)

Boss decided that I needed to use some of their equipment for Project M. This is actually a good idea since their new toy is one that’s hard to get. So I dutifully made an appointment to talk to the Master of the Toy (MT). He decided on this afternoon at 2, so I canceled tutoring when I marked my calendar last week. Then I prepared, nervously waited and hoped I didn’t make a fool of myself.

I walked over to the new habitat and took the elevator to the floor of faculty offices. I wandered toward where I thought his office was, asked the secretary to confirm its location, and sighed when I saw his door was closed and all the lights were off.

I needed to use Tim’s office yesterday – he’s one of my favorite faculty members in my department. I stopped by in the morning and asked when I could borrow one of his toys. He said the afternoon would work better for him, and I nodded happily. I returned after a terrible seminar (Do NOT talk over your allotted time! No, no, NO. This irritates me to no end. Plus, have you noticed that when people start to say, “I know I’m running short on time.” they also become painfully redundant because the focus shifts from the material to the fact that someone else wants the room? Freaking speaker. I'm glad I walked out of your talk 5 minutes after it was due to be over and 20 minutes after you should have stopped for questions.) and he was nowhere to be found. So I sent him an email asking if he could let me know when I should stop by.

He came down the hall to find me, smiling sheepishly. “I’m sorry.” He said. “I forgot all about you! You can come now if you have time. Or later works too. But did you see there were sandwiches and treats in the lunch room? You could eat if you want.”

Excited over the idea of free food because I’d chosen a lame speaker over lunch, I had a sandwich and some strange s'more/cookie creation, then went to Tim’s office. We worked – each on our own projects – in a companionable silence. I made efficient progress and picked up after myself as I went. I don’t like to impose on people, so I try to be as polite as possible when I'm forced to take up their space.

He left after about 30 minutes and returned in another 15. I had one more dataset left to acquire, and glanced up to watch him look startled at my presence.

“Sorry.” I said. “I’m almost finished.”

“You’re fine.” He said. “I just forgot you were in here!”

“I’m apparently quite forgettable today.” I said, meaning for it to be funny, but it came out petulant. Do I really shrink when I’m at work? Become somehow translucent so that people can easily look past me without noting my presence? I let them – I know that. I’d rather be polite and peaceful than battle for respect. But perhaps I’ve had enough.

“I had dental work done this morning.” Tim offered. “It’s still making me all weird.”

We launched into a discussion of how awful dental visits are and everything was fine. But I was reminded as I headed back to my office this afternoon. People somehow forget about me. I diffuse the light so there's a sense that something is there, but I don't seem to register with people in any real way.

So I did what I always do. I returned to my desk, set down my notebook with all my carefully prepared notes and papers and applications, and wrote MT an email saying I had missed him somehow and would run back over if he gave me a call or sent an email. Or if this afternoon turned out to be inconvenient, would he like to reschedule?

And I felt impossibly small and pathetic. Partially because I knew Boss felt strongly that I needed to jump on this opportunity to use the cool, new toy. He would ask questions about the meeting and why didn't I look harder for MT and remind me of how important this work was. I also was so nervous about this meeting – it was important to me and I had thought out my questions and statements, was ready to sit and talk about work I feel is important, and he couldn’t even remember to be in his office at the time he scheduled. I felt very sorry for myself.

I finished up the work on Project H and transferred files to my USB drive so I could do work here at home, answered a phone call and received some information I needed. I was writing a sympathy-seeking email to Friend when someone knocked at the open door to my office. I turned to see MT. Surprise fails to adequately convey my feeling in that moment.

“Hi.” I said, floundering in my confusion.

“I’m sorry.” He apologized. “I really meant to be around and I got caught up with someone and lost track of time.” Shaking his head at himself, he retrieved a chair from across the room, smiled and set my magnet toy into motion with a push of his index finger, then focused his attention on me. “I am sorry. I try not to miss appointments.”

“That’s really OK.” I said, slipping into my sweet and polite mode without really thinking about it. “I would have come back to your office.” I offered and he waved a hand to dismiss that idea as he crossed an ankle over his knee.

I launched into my spiel – asked a few questions, heard the answers I wanted (including the offer to use the toy for free – a very big deal indeed), and was generally pleased with the meeting. So I’ve been filling out paperwork this evening and doing some lit searches. I’m excited – the dataset this project will generate is going to be tremendous. Extreme-crazy-totally-ultra-super-major great-wonderful-fantastic-lovely. But he failed to send the documents I requested. Perhaps there was a small sense that he should do something, but the idea failed to take shape because I'm just not quite opaque enough.

The hope is that this particular project completes my graduate work – fixes all the problems, fills in all the gaps, answers all the questions. There will be glitches, of course, and we’ll likely introduce a whole host of new hypotheses. But this should offer incredible opportunities to learn and collaborate and publish.

My hope – on a personal level – is I gain back the ground I lost over my defense and the beginning of this post-doc. That I find a way to incorporate confidence and knowledge to balance my sweetly questioning nature when I interact with people on a professional level. At this point I think I’m just recognizing how much I put myself down. How often I allow others to ignore me. It will be an important process to stop those bad habits and develop some healthy yet likeable qualities that make me more effective.

I’m not sure how to wrap this post up. This idea likely plays into my site statistics obsession - I need to know someone is listening. That what I do makes some difference - takes up some space. Perhaps it's OK that I don't know the answer right now – it’s all a work in progress.