Self-reflection's understandably quickening at two weeks from my 30th (to be spent in S. Carolina at another grad school visit).
I've been reading over what old papers I still have. Amazing how little I wince at them. Not that they're especially good, but I'm very forgiving, and of course the ideal reader--getting all jokes etc. The amazement's because I can't stand ones I just wrote. It's always all wrong, not at all what I meant or nothing a reader could ever understand.
The two surviving from about ten years ago amuse me most. What a terrible student I was then. Such a contempt for the paper-writing process. Ironically making them much better, as structured papers. Few ideas, drawn out to great length via examples. Hated citing just as much then, though, apparently. And how angry and humorous. I don't mean funny, necessarily, but finding things funny and framing them for humor. Heh, if I'd been funnier maybe I wouldn't have abandoned that sensibility.
( Me at 20: )
