[Sort of] A Meme: Bragging Rights

Not really sure if this counts as a meme, since it isn't circulating (yet??) anywhere. But this is the culmination of some ruminating that I was doing recently and it sure seems meme-like, at least in form.

#1) Take your age, in years, and divide by eight.
#2) Round up or down, as appropriate.
#3) Name the top X list of things you are proudest of about yourself, where X is the result from step two. What you are proudest of can be anything: something that you have accomplished, your race, being related to somebody famous, your country... anything! For bonus points, explain why you are proud of each item in the list.

Here is my list:

The Four Thing of Which I am Proudest, by Nomad
#1) My Ph.D. Seemingly simple, this one encompasses a lot. I am proud of having survived the intensity of my first year in graduate school, when all I did was eat, breathe, and sleep physics. I am proud of passing my comprehensive exams with distinction, when I feared I could never pass them at all. I am proud to have worked as a member of the Super-Kamiokande collaboration, including -- but certainly not limited to -- basking in the reflected glory of my collaborator, Koshiba-sensei, when he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics. I am proud to have been first author, out of a collaboration of ~125, on a paper published in Physical Review Letters, the most august journal of our field. And I am proud to have won the 2003 Lee Wilcox Prize for the best experimental dissertation.

#2) My relationship with cheshcat. I am thirty-one years old. In one month and one day, cheshcat and I will celebrate our twelfth anniversary. We have been together for the entirety of my adult life. I know a few other people who have been together from as early an age into their thirties and beyond... but not many. And the things we have endured together in those twelve years! Yet here we are, and still going strong. Less than a month now, too, until she comes back to England to stay.

#3) Being an Anarchist. Shouldn't be too surprising to hear -- it's in my username, right? I am proud to be an Anarchist because I am so disgusted by the current status quo. Everything wrong with the way the world is now... but mirrored about. That's Anarchy. But, even moreso, I am proud to be an Anarchist by the way that I arrived there. When I was as young as eleven, I remember reading the encyclopedia -- which I did regularly as a kid -- and thinking about how to merge the "political freedom" of democracy with the "social equality" of communism. I remember being a misguided twelve year old right-Libertarian, fervently arguing in class debates against government control of business. I didn't know the term "Libertarian" (and certainly not "right-Libertarian") at the time... and neither did my eighth grade history teacher, who saw me as the budding Republican in the class. And it would still be a few more years before I understood that corporate domination is different than government domination... but just as evil. My evolution continued until, in college, I needed a word to describe what I believed... and I chose "Anarchy." At the time, I still suffered from the common delusion equating Anarchists and Nihlists, yet the term also seemed to fit the philosophy that I had worked out for myself. Finally, at the age of twenty-one, angryjim told me: "You're not really an Anarchist; that's just a term you made up." True, but I told him neither of us had ever looked at Anarchist philosophy, so neither of us knew for sure what an Anarchist was. I figured his definition was correct, but I bought a book on Anarchist thought anyway... and was startled to learn that I was actually right. So, yeah, I am proud to have independently re-invented Anarchy.

#4) Surviving my Adolescence. Nearly a decade of depression. Everpresent loneliness and rejection. Trapped in a school that I hated. Inferiority complex. Thrown out of the house more times than I can remember now. Running away from home time and again. Having my mother call the police on me. Being hit by my father -- not often, but still. How I managed to survive without even a serious suicide attempt is beyond me. In retrospect, the number of good times -- and there were plenty, but all isolated islands of fun in a sea of misery -- is a testament to my inherently positive nature. Certainly the darkest period in my life. It coloured my self-outlook for so long that I still thought of myself as being depressed and unstable into my mid-to-late 20s. Until cheshcat mentioned to me one day that I was one of the most mentally balanced people that she knew. That comment startled me as being starkly different than how I thought of myself. So I had to sit back and think about it... and I realized that she was right. At that point, I had been neither depressed nor unstable for quite a number of years... only the labels in my self-impression had remained.

If I had more things to list, there are several runners-up that I would count, like my family-by-choice, my graduation from Hampshire College, my transition from being a carnivore to being a vegetarian, et cetera. But fair's fair -- four is all I get, for now.

Being a physicist, of course, I am trained to think of symmetries and anti-symmetries. So I have also asked myself the question: What four things am I least proud of? I am not going to list the answers here... but I will say that they were all things that happened in a short period of time, generally with no forethought. In contrast, all the things of which I am most proud have taken place over an extended period of years, required large amounts of effort. I think this exemplifies the sort of thing that makes me proud: Accomplishments that I have made by my own choices and efforts over an extended period of time. I am not proud of my gender, my race, my nationality (heck no!), or my relations... or any other quality that I was simply born into.

Anyway, if anybody else chooses to adopt this not-really-a-meme, I would be interested in seeing what y'all decide to brag about. If not, well it wasn't really a meme anyway... just something that I was musing about the other day, looking back on my thirty-one years of life.

[Sort of] A Meme: Bragging Rights

Not really sure if this counts as a meme, since it isn't circulating (yet??) anywhere. But this is the culmination of some ruminating that I was doing recently and it sure seems meme-like, at least in form.

#1) Take your age, in years, and divide by eight.
#2) Round up or down, as appropriate.
#3) Name the top X list of things you are proudest of about yourself, where X is the result from step two. What you are proudest of can be anything: something that you have accomplished, your race, being related to somebody famous, your country... anything! For bonus points, explain why you are proud of each item in the list.

Here is my list:

The Four Thing of Which I am Proudest, by Nomad
#1) My Ph.D. Seemingly simple, this one encompasses a lot. I am proud of having survived the intensity of my first year in graduate school, when all I did was eat, breathe, and sleep physics. I am proud of passing my comprehensive exams with distinction, when I feared I could never pass them at all. I am proud to have worked as a member of the Super-Kamiokande collaboration, including -- but certainly not limited to -- basking in the reflected glory of my collaborator, Koshiba-sensei, when he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics. I am proud to have been first author, out of a collaboration of ~125, on a paper published in Physical Review Letters, the most august journal of our field. And I am proud to have won the 2003 Lee Wilcox Prize for the best experimental dissertation.

#2) My relationship with cheshcat. I am thirty-one years old. In one month and one day, cheshcat and I will celebrate our twelfth anniversary. We have been together for the entirety of my adult life. I know a few other people who have been together from as early an age into their thirties and beyond... but not many. And the things we have endured together in those twelve years! Yet here we are, and still going strong. Less than a month now, too, until she comes back to England to stay.

#3) Being an Anarchist. Shouldn't be too surprising to hear -- it's in my username, right? I am proud to be an Anarchist because I am so disgusted by the current status quo. Everything wrong with the way the world is now... but mirrored about. That's Anarchy. But, even moreso, I am proud to be an Anarchist by the way that I arrived there. When I was as young as eleven, I remember reading the encyclopedia -- which I did regularly as a kid -- and thinking about how to merge the "political freedom" of democracy with the "social equality" of communism. I remember being a misguided twelve year old right-Libertarian, fervently arguing in class debates against government control of business. I didn't know the term "Libertarian" (and certainly not "right-Libertarian") at the time... and neither did my eighth grade history teacher, who saw me as the budding Republican in the class. And it would still be a few more years before I understood that corporate domination is different than government domination... but just as evil. My evolution continued until, in college, I needed a word to describe what I believed... and I chose "Anarchy." At the time, I still suffered from the common delusion equating Anarchists and Nihlists, yet the term also seemed to fit the philosophy that I had worked out for myself. Finally, at the age of twenty-one, angryjim told me: "You're not really an Anarchist; that's just a term you made up." True, but I told him neither of us had ever looked at Anarchist philosophy, so neither of us knew for sure what an Anarchist was. I figured his definition was correct, but I bought a book on Anarchist thought anyway... and was startled to learn that I was actually right. So, yeah, I am proud to have independently re-invented Anarchy.

#4) Surviving my Adolescence. Nearly a decade of depression. Everpresent loneliness and rejection. Trapped in a school that I hated. Inferiority complex. Thrown out of the house more times than I can remember now. Running away from home time and again. Having my mother call the police on me. Being hit by my father -- not often, but still. How I managed to survive without even a serious suicide attempt is beyond me. In retrospect, the number of good times -- and there were plenty, but all isolated islands of fun in a sea of misery -- is a testament to my inherently positive nature. Certainly the darkest period in my life. It coloured my self-outlook for so long that I still thought of myself as being depressed and unstable into my mid-to-late 20s. Until cheshcat mentioned to me one day that I was one of the most mentally balanced people that she knew. That comment startled me as being starkly different than how I thought of myself. So I had to sit back and think about it... and I realized that she was right. At that point, I had been neither depressed nor unstable for quite a number of years... only the labels in my self-impression had remained.

If I had more things to list, there are several runners-up that I would count, like my family-by-choice, my graduation from Hampshire College, my transition from being a carnivore to being a vegetarian, et cetera. But fair's fair -- four is all I get, for now.

Being a physicist, of course, I am trained to think of symmetries and anti-symmetries. So I have also asked myself the question: What four things am I least proud of? I am not going to list the answers here... but I will say that they were all things that happened in a short period of time, generally with no forethought. In contrast, all the things of which I am most proud have taken place over an extended period of years, required large amounts of effort. I think this exemplifies the sort of thing that makes me proud: Accomplishments that I have made by my own choices and efforts over an extended period of time. I am not proud of my gender, my race, my nationality (heck no!), or my relations... or any other quality that I was simply born into.

Anyway, if anybody else chooses to adopt this not-really-a-meme, I would be interested in seeing what y'all decide to brag about. If not, well it wasn't really a meme anyway... just something that I was musing about the other day, looking back on my thirty-one years of life.