Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Lacking Competence

My labmate sent an email to me and our post-doc asking if we could proof-read the dissertation chapter she just finished. Here's her message:

Would you two mind reading this? By reading this, you are exempt from reading anything else (ok, maybe just one more chapter, as we are limited not by the number of people in our lab, but in the number of competent people in our lab).

So funny, and so true. When random strangers find out that I'm a graduate student in chemistry, the first thing that a horrifying number of them say is, "Wow, you must be really smart." My standard response to this is now, "You'd be surprised..."

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