I wasn't a good grad student

There's a new baby photo post at my private people-photo blog. Our August was unusually rainy and I got some photos of one particularly gorgeous sunset (yeah, they're phone camera photos, whatev).

our stake center haloed by the sunset

the lines going downward are rain

when I feed Piper this is what Koko does half the time

I got rid of a bunch of old school papers lately and it made me reflect on my time as a grad student. Looking back on my papers, I seem really stubborn and a little stupid. Why would I sometimes ignore my professors' suggestions, when obviously they are experts on what they want to see in the papers they're grading? I think that I was trying to break away from doing whatever pleased my professors/teachers. I did that and got the good grades in most of my undergraduate years. But now that I have more distance I think that I was trying to hard to be my own academic mind, per se. Maybe it was necessary for me to see my own ideas as worthwhile, rather than as a tool to impress someone. I was both self-conscious about my lack of experience in literary criticism, and of my superior dedication to empirical research. I was both proud and self-deprecating. Quite possibly I have the same problem now but I'm too close to myself to see it.

Lately I've been reading a Harry Potter fanfiction called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It's really good! I think I like it even better than the original Harry Potter books, although there are a few parts that are annoyingly self-satisfied (like most fanfics). My favorite parts are when characters use their awareness of cognitive biases to improve their situations. 

Piper has been lovely. She sleeps through the night and doesn't cry too much. I have no complaints.