intellectual

My female owner engaged fully in her catastrophising exercise today. This is how the story goes. She completed (again) the first study of her thesis (with the purpose of publication) and submitted it to her supervisor for comments. Her supervisor then forwarded the paper to another academic staff (a young but high-flying associate professor) to see if he wanted to be part of the authorship. This was possible because this high-flyer and her supervisor were co-sharers of the research grant.

And at last minute’s notice, my female owner found herself in a meeting with these two brainy people, one a clinical psychologist and the other a social psychologist. Experts in their own fields and right, each tried to assert his (valid) intellectual spin on the paper. My female owner got lost (and possible shot) in the cross-fire. You know, the saying “you don’t even know how you died”? Yah, that was how she felt. She couldn’t quite understand the essence of their bone of contention over choice of statistical analyses.

Bit by bit, she felt herself being more and more vulnerable. She felt that her bimbo-ness was going to be exposed sooner or later. Especially when high-flying professor said he wanted to meet her another time to go through the data more thoroughly. My female owner didn’t think she would be able to handle that level of intellectual scrutiny and debate. And of course, she has to rewrite the paper again.

Hence her catastrophising.