I changed the quote of the week and stole it from the signature of my dear friend Bart.
‘Try to look unimportant, they may be low on ammo.’
Infantry Journal
I did it to prepare for my talk next week which feels a bit like a D-Day to me: drop into enemy territory, surrounded by medievalists stacked up with ‘anachronism’ grenades and a fierce warrior look on their faces and try to make the best of the situation… thus ‘try to look unimportant’.
But actually, I am just kidding myself here, because whatever I do, whatever I say etc. I cannot seem to make myself look unimportant. A fellow student once told me years back that it was my stance, my demaneour and my charisma that would never allow me to go unnoticed. Although, of course, I look like a complete bonehead and like a self centred diva for quoting this here, it does hold some truth. It’s true, sometimes even in a discussion I get extremely uncomfortable at the fact that *snap* everybody turns around to look at me when I start making an observation in a seminar or in a discussion. I have never dealt good with that kind of attention, simply because I feel that I am putting myself under enough pressure without others adding to this by scrutinising me while talking or telling me ‘don’t worry, you will be brilliant… as usual’. Yeah, right.
Living with expectation is a difficult task and it’s different for everybody. For me the most difficult thing is the ‘fraud stance’. I sometimes catch myself thinking that people are just stupid believing that I am able do all the things they are expecting me to do and that it’s due to their incapacity to see me for the fraud I am. This is mainly linked to the fact that I never considered to do something that stands out of the crowd. I can see the “Yeeeeeeah… Suuuure.” on your faces out there. But it’s true. In fact I don’t even consider myself to be extremely smart or nice. I just try to see behind the obvious things. And the sad thing is that this is all it takes to stand out and ‘look important’… *sigh*
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