When you achieve major goals in life, it’s very difficult not to send intensely petty emails to all those who told you that you could never do something, who vehemently pronounced that it just wasn’t possible for someone like you.
True. I still have vindictive feelings towards that advisor who laughed at me when I said I wanted to do a PhD in Spanish because, she said, as an immigrant I should set my sights on something practical that would lead to a job. The same person forbade me to register for a course on Don Quijote because it was “at an entirely different level than where you are.” Of course, I immediately registered and got an A in the course. And next year I’ll be teaching it.
Clarissa's Blog 
Just be happy that you exceeded expectations instead of falling short.
You’d feel worse if somebody had told you, “You’ll definitely be a university president by age 40,” and now you’d have to e-mail them: “No, alas, just another Ph.D professor among the crowd.”
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No, I’d feel pretty great because administrators are people who bombed at research. I don’t value anything at all professionally if it isn’t a research career.
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I feel that way too. Whenever I get professional success it is a big FU to all who doubted me. But then I think it is a very few people, after all.
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They are not numerous, but that’s what makes them even more memorable.
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