Sacrifice

There's a post over at MiM today about what women need to do to be successful. the big takeaways I got were:

1. In men, success and likeability are positively correlated. In women, negatively. You need to attribute your success to yourself even if you risk not being liked. Takeaway: Your real friends will like you and support you through your successes and failures even if they are a little jealous too sometimes.

2. Choose your spouse wisely. If your husband works too, he should be sharing responsibilities at home in an equitable fashion. Takeaway: Ask your husband for the help you need. If you are in the dating stage, ask your bf/gf. If they are put out by the request, it is a sign. They are not going to change, and you should take that under advisement.

3. If you want to have a family, try not to start checking out of work mentally before you even have children. Takeaway: Do what you do full throttle until you want to do something different. Then do that full throttle instead.

Then she asks us, the readers, to talk about how we've shortchanged ourselves.

So, here it is: I shortchanged myself by not realizing that I was smart enough to do med school pre-reqs and get As in them during college.

I shortchanged myself by allowing my fear of math keep me from higher level math and science classes in college, even though I almost always got As in those classes.

I shortchanged myself by not looking into how to get involved in research when I realized that health services research was really what I wanted to do -- the year after I graduated from college.

I shortchanged myself by dating a guy for three years that I knew was completely wrong for me (we would NEVER have been equal partners) because I was afraid of being alone.

I shortchanged myself in my current program during my first year when I allowed my default mentor (that I was initially assigned, not my current one) to pressure me into working for him even though I wasn't interested in his research. I shortchanged myself by not asserting that I wanted to talk to other investigators, and that I needed some sort of introduction before I emailed them so that they would know that my inquiries were legitimate.

But I do a lot of things right as well.

I try to say thank you when I receive a complement.

I work my ass off to get my work done, even though I don't know if / when we will have kids.

I picked an awesome husband who loves to clean, but mostly who loves to see me happy.

I am trying to apologize less. For everything.

I have accepted that some people will not like who I am no matter what I do (unless I fail), and have decided that this is their problem. I try not to obsess over this.

I try to be kind and encouraging to my female friends who doubt themselves and make self deprecating remarks.

I try to realize that other peoples' successes are not personal failings (though this is hard sometimes, especially when things aren't going as well as I want them to).

I try tame the inner green monster when I meet women who are more successful than I am. This is also not always easy. :-)

I am getting better at identifying and articulating my needs in my program in a constructive fashion that gets me what I need and makes other people happy.

Anyway, I encourage you to read the full post, as this hardly does it justice. Since the other author wanted to know how you've shortchanged yourselves, *I* want to hear from you the things you've done right.