The other day at the Jeopardy! taping, I ran into my advisor from undergrad. She was now retired, and how grey she'd become was a reminder of just how long it really has been since I was an undergrad. I've known her for a long time. We chatted briefly as we left the stadium. She asked how my studies were going. I responded that I've finished the core coursework of my program but still don't have a dissertation topic. "Well that sounds like you," was her response. I believe my surprise at hearing such a reply actually caused me to stop walking. She did not elaborate. When I had recovered from my shock, I asked, "What do you mean by that?" At this point, my phone rang and I never did hear her explanation.

I often wonder what impression I give other people. In meeting new people, I obsessively try to leave them with a positive impression (as I think positively of myself most of the time) and, for quite some time after, obsessively wonder whether I was successful. I question whether I was truly being myself or instead the version I would like me to be. Furthermore, I am unsure of even whether they correctly inferred any one of these two possible realities. Of course, as I get to know them better, the fear of misrepresentation attenuates. But even with people that I've known for a very long time, I'm never truly convinced that they know who I am. Sure, they might know a lot of facts about me--and the observant ones may even know my habits and tendencies--but I know I'm more than the sum of these things, or rather the perceptions and second-hard recollections of these things. Given the effort it takes for me to decipher my own thoughts and the struggle in articulating the ideas I try to share, I know they'll never fully understand how I feel. I'm not even sure whether I understand how I feel sometimes.

So when someone, like my advisor, says something that is inconsistent with who I think I am, two questions arise. Was I unable to properly convey a sense of who I am? Or have they merely seen beyond the biased version of me with which I have presented them?