Tell.
I was going to talk about tell, and explain how it’s had this odd — but possibly mistaken — influence in our theories of questions. (But points — the meaningless, Whose line is it anyway? kind of points — if you can get any kind of feeling about the truth value of the following:
John was having a conversation with Mary. He intended to lie to her, but he was misinformed. John told Mary who was at the party.
It’s important not to put something like As it turned out, then, John told Mary . . . I keep going from “yes you can say that” to “no you can’t”. You can’t say something like “John told Mary who wsa at the party. He was deliberately lying.” You can say something like “John told Mary who was at the party. He was mistaken.” I normally use my cats’ names instead of John and Mary, but I never use them as liers or murderers, so that’s out. Anyways, I know some Johns (in the “people named” sense, not the goes to prostitutes sense) I don’t like.)
But what I have decided to talk about instead (”Instead”? I made the earlier bits concise and left out all of the references — no doubt to everyone’s relief — but I did actually cover most of whatI had intended) is the poker version of tell. The one where it’s a noun.
In poker, for those people who didn’t read Poker Nation this weekend[1] instead of, say, work[2], a tell is your giveaway. You might stack your chips when you have a good hand, or look out into nowhere when you have a bad hand, or something else along those lines. Most of us have tells when we’re lying, too. And don’t we have them about everything? Some of them are more obvious than others.
What, I wonder, are mine? Oh, not the ones where I lie, or where I’m happy, or even where I’m scared. No. What are my tellls when I’m unhappy and feeling inadequate? What are the ones when I am sure, so sure, I will always be alone? Or where I feel I’m someone else entirely, or when I worry that if anyone really knew me, they’d hate me. Those tells.
Sometimes I wonder if I have them. Unless I deliberately let slip — and I will be honest: it is always[3] deliberate — people don’t know. Oh, J said, you were terrified and not sleeping and crying before you gave that talk last year? Wow. I didn’t know. How not, I wondered. Oh, A said, when we were about to study for an exam, when I had been applying for grad schools and one thing went a little wrong and I burst into tears, you always seem so composed. I didn’t realise you were even feeling stress.
Oh.
These aren’t good friends of mine. Good friends know. I will talk about myself less (though subtly, and I will talk about things *around* myself more. So you can hear about my roommates[4], but not about my research. Most people care more about other people than research, so it’s a good hide).
Last week, in class (indeed, the class in which I did not at the time understand Matthew’s paper, nor did I understand A’s question, nor N’s response, but I finally understood when S explained it to me, and I did get the professor’s answer, which was just a proof) my brain went I am too stupid for this class, I don’t understand anything, I can’t do [this subfield] at all, I want to do it, I can’t, I don’t know anything,I don’t have the background, I could never understand anything well enough to get the background . . .
You can, I am sure, imagine how it went. The problem is that I think this is the subfield I want to be in. If not, I want to be on an interface with it. Now, yes, A and N have much more math background than I do, which is important in this course. And all of them are year(s) ahead of me in the program. And everyone is perfectly happy to explain to me whatever I don’t understand — A is phenomenal at this: he is brilliant, and an incredible teacher, and a great guy, and I hope that he gets a great job some day.
I wonder why I feel this. Do I need, somewhere I didn’t know I had, to be the best? I don’t think so, but perhaps. I just feel, terrifiedly, Not Good Enough. Not. Not ever. Can’t be, why even try to be a [this subfield]icist? I don’t know what to do or say about it. I could tell people. I have. J (a different J, as it happens) says it takes time for it to sink in. A says I’ll get it in time. S suggests I work harder at the articles (fair enough: I do need to). My mother says it’s normal and that I’ll get it in time. Or I won’t and I’ll do something else.
I want to go to the people I know who would comfort me, but I wouldn’t believe them when they did.I want to go to the professors here, but I don’t dare share this much fear with them, not yet. And I worry, too, that they’ll tell me I’m *not* good enough, I should leave now.
And all this is contradictory and I don’t know what to do with any of it, exactly. I am avoiding people. I am not writing friends. I am not phoning friends. The only people I talk to at all regularly are my roommate and my mother. (My father and I just can’t communicate on the phone. At all. We’re fine in person; I love spending time just the two of us. But on the phone, well, there’s better use for my long distance dollars. Including phoning for the time in Australia.) And I talked about this briefly with my mother, but that’s it.
I’m going home next weekend, and I think 2 people know. I leave Thursday. I need to do something, but I haven’t been. I feel guilty. I am a bad friend right now. Very bad. And I know this and I feel guilty and plan to be different, and I’m not. Because –
Oh, this isn’t going anywhere. I feel horrible and not good enough, and no one knows. And I don’t know if it’s that I’m a good liar or that no one wants to bring it up, because they feel the same way.
[1] Actually, reread. And I think I might’ve read an article by the same guy, too. I really don’t understand the lure of gambling.
[2] Not entirely true. I did some work, too. I understood Matthew’s article! (We’re allowed to call it that because Matthew is at our university and we see him all the time, plus it’s what the professor calls it.)
[3] When I desperately need to talk, but can’t quite find the way to say that. Because of I’m not sure. So I say something that will lead my good friends to ask. Because I have at least been able to tell them how I do this. I’m not entirely self-sabotaging, just mostly.
[4] One of whom I like, very much. The other one I don’t mind, though I wish he’d wear less aftershave, because the kitchen always reeks of it in the morning. I also wish he didn’t smoke, but so far it’s only outside, so that’s fine. Ish.