And one more question from reader el:

Did you publish already during your MA, which let you to be accepted to good PhD program?

My very first publication in a prestigious, peer-reviewed journal for adults (as opposed to graduate student journals) took place even before the MA. I was in the Honours program during my Bachelor’s program, which means that I had to take 60 (instead of 40) credits in Hispanic Studies and write a research paper called “Honours Thesis.”

My adviser said the Honours Thesis was good and had to be published and made me rewrite it six times. I had only been learning Spanish for a little over 2 years by that time, and it isn’t easy to write a research paper in a language that is so recently acquired.

This was the most difficult piece of research I have ever done. I had no idea how to do research at that time, so I invented the following procedure:

1. I chose a novel by a very famous writer.

2. I read it and formulated an idea on the basis of it.

3. Then I read the existing criticism and realized that every critic who had ever written about this novel had reached the same conclusion.

4. It would have been idiotic to repeat the same thing after these critics, so I decided that I would say the exact opposite and prove it.

5. In the process of proving the exact opposite of what the critics were saying, I discovered that this exact opposite actually made a lot more sense.

I don’t work that way any longer but that was a fun experience.

Altogether, I had 5 publications in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals for adults before I started my job search. I want to have 10 more + a book before tenure.

By the way, I really like people who ask me questions.

Another set of questions from reader el:

2) Did you believe from the beginning you had “it” to succeed? What if one wants to try and achieve something, but has this feeling “I am not smart, creative, etc enough”?

My sister and I were brought up in a way that doesn’t leave space for these sorts of doubts. I always knew I was very talented because since the day I was born there was a group of people following me everywhere and chanting, “OMG, you are so talented!” I knew I would get accepted to McGill, I knew I would get accepted to Yale, I knew I would get both of my big Canadian scholarships, I knew I would get published, I knew I would get a good tenure-track job after graduating, and so on. This is the positive mother/father complex we talked about a while ago.

For a variety of reasons, this vision of myself was damaged while I was in my doctoral program. As a result, there were a few months where my positive mother/father complex started slipping away. I got them back since then and never want to be without them again. This was such a bad experience that I have got to wonder how people manage to go through their entire lives like this.

3) For instance, in your field, not everybody *is* good enough to succeed objectively. At what point can one sadly but honestly accept one’s limitations and stop trying to break a wall?

I don’t think it’s productive to look at things from this negative point of view of having limitations, not being good enough, and breaking through walls. I suggest we take the approach based on fun and enjoyment. Here are some questions to ask oneself (based on the example of my field, but feel free to substitute any other area of human endeavor):

Are reading books in the area of Hispanic Studies, talking about them, and writing about them the most enjoyable (non-sexual) activities you have ever experienced? Do you feel little explosions of happiness when you clutch a new book by a leading critic in your field to your chest? When you hear the word “fun”, does anything related to your work in this area immediately come to mind? Does your work energize you?

If not, ask yourself: Why am I wasting my life on something that is not intensely enjoyable? Just consider the weirdness of dedicating a lifetime to having a bad time. How strange is that?

Also, a small clarification: when people say, “Not everybody can afford to work in a way that is fun”, what they are really saying is, “I lack psychological energy to enjoy life and work.”

Reader Robert asked:

But really, how would you explain Germany leaving the rest of continental Europe in the dust, so to speak?

Here is how this worked on the example of a country I know best, namely, Spain. For centuries, Spain has had an image of a not-fully-European country. There is this famous saying, “Africa begins in the Pyrenees” that has produced an enormous amount of shame and discomfort.

In the efforts finally to become fully European, Spaniards sought the entrance to the European Union. The prestige of being called “European” was so painfully desired that the country agreed to destroy its entire productive economy and allow Germans to sell their goods instead of the local goods that weren’t produced any longer. Later on, other peripheral countries did the same.

Germany is now selling admission tickets to a prestigious identity label. To buy admission to this label, one country after another destroys its productive economy and adopts the goods and services of the countries that have positioned themselves as gatekeepers to this identity label: Germany, UK, and France. France has mostly taken itself out of the running in the last decade because of its immigration policies. The UK is going in the same direction. So who’s left? Right you are, Germany.

At this very moment, Germany is trying to force Ukraine to buy the identity label and destroy its agriculture to help out German farmers.

Of course, this explanation is a little more complex than the childish blabber about “work ethic.” But this is a blog for people with brains, so let’s analyze and avoid platitudes gleaned from the NYTimes and TV shows.

What does a teacher like more than answering questions? Answering even more questions, of course!

Reader el asked me some interesting questions that I would like to answer:

1) Laziness and/or procrastination, tendency to leave all work till last day/night. How did you avoid this trap while writing PhD? If it isn’t connected to willpower, to what it is?

As we all know, laziness does not exist. “Laziness” is a code word for a specific set of psychological problems. And so is “willpower.” I prefer to skip the nicety of “willpower” and refer to this phenomenon with its real name: “masochism.” If you routinely try to exercise “willpower” and make yourself do what you don’t want to, that’s masochism, pure and simple. A more productive approach is to figure out the reason why you are compelled to create these situations where you will experience these masochistic joys on a regular basis.

Life is supposed to be enjoyed. It is supposed to be fun, and not just sometimes, but all of the time. Grief, suffering, unpleasantness should be the exceptions. If you don’t feel actively happy 90% of time, then something is not going right and it has to be addressed.

For the longest time, I was in the grip of a phenomenon that I called “laziness” but that was something entirely different. Here is how it worked: every day I would play this strange sort of game where I would passionately want to do something but would somehow never manage to do it. For instance, I would have this great new book in my field of research that I would be dying to read. I would imagine myself lying in bed, a rose-scented candle and a glass of juice next to me, reading this book, and having an amazing time.

All I needed to do to have this enjoyable experience is just start having it. But I couldn’t. I liked imagining it but there was something so terrifying about it that no amount of masochism (=willpower) was enough to break my resistance. And it was the same with writing, publishing, doing research. I was standing in my own way to having fun while doing what I love to do.

It was only after I identified what was so scary about being a successful research scholar and so attractive about the masochism of applying willpower that this problem went away. (In my situation, it was something as simple as every successful research scholar I knew being a horrible person and me not wanting to become like them. It helped to meet somebody who is a successful research scholar and a great person.)

I don’t want to bore people but here is just one more example of how identifying the fear at the core of the laziness/willpower dyad helps defeat it. I now regularly go to the gym which is a place that I used to avoid like the plague for decades. The reason why I hated gyms is that just being inside one placed me in the persona of a scrawny, clumsy 8-year-old who was the worst of the entire class in Physical Training. I didn’t want to be that kid anymore and, for me, slipping into this role was automatic the moment I approached a gym.

All it took to get over that was to realize what was going on and to ensure I had firmly grounded myself in my adult persona before going to the gym. And now I enjoy it. Actually, I’m going there right after I finish this post.