me: haha oh god this is so bad im making so many unsupported claims and pulling all this analysis out of my ass
my prof in the margins: excellent analysis!
me:
when i was in high school i used to write my papers thinking wow i’m just bullshitting all of this. then like a week before my senior year ended after all the grades were set, i was talking to my english teacher and told him you know i just bullshitted every paper i wrote. he told me that while i may have thought i was just pulling it all out of my ass, i genuinely knew what i was talking about and made well-supported analyses. i only thought i was bullshitting because it didn’t take much effort and it all seemed obvious to me. if you do well on your essays even though you think you’re just making it up as you go, chances are you’re not pulling it out of your ass. you’re just a genuinely talented analyst, even if the analysis that you’re making comes from a subconscious understanding of the material rather than a conscious effort to study it. give yourself some credit.
