Thứ Ba, 29 tháng 10, 2013

A (really) bad analogy

This week I have spent most of my time researching on the bailouts practice in America. The Central Bank, as many people agree, has a role as the lender of last resort who is willing to provide liquidity to an illiquid bank. By rough definition, there are two types of "bad" banks: the insolvent one, and the illiquid one. The latter is "less bad" than the former. A bank is insolvent when its assets value goes down, hence its net worth becomes negative. This is often because a bank is imprudent in its lending, resulting in a big portion of non-performing debts on its asset side. During crisis time, when these assets go down in value enough, a bank becomes insolvent. In theory, this type of bad bank does not deserve help, and should take the bad consequence as punishment in the competitive environment. Alternatively, a bank can be illiquid, which means that it is just unlucky that many people, for unconvincing reasons, show up to demand cash at the same time. This bank deserves help, since it has done nothing wrong. The problem is, it is often hard to distinguish an illiquid (unlucky) bank, and an insolvent (bad) bank. Hence, the government, even with good intention, may end up bailing out the bad bank as well.

To make a really bad analogy, in research, there is an unmotivated researcher, and a bad researcher. An unmotivated researcher, like an illiquid bank, generally is a decent researcher who does nothing wrong, and he is just unlucky that no idea comes up at a particular point of time. A bad researcher, on the other hand, takes on many imprudent actions (not trying hard enough, not having the brain to be a researcher, etc.) and simply deserves to fail and be kicked out of the field. Now, that's me right now. It's not clear to me which type I am.

Let's hope I'm the unmotivated one.

Thứ Tư, 23 tháng 10, 2013

Look up

This article (Look Up), share by a friend of mine, hit me hard, from the first sentence: "People don't look up". At that very moment, I asked myself: "Do I look up?". Well, sometimes I don't.

Thirty minutes ago, I got out of the exam room and felt grumpy about not being able to do what I thought I could. Not doing well (or at least, as well as I expected) in exams here at Princeton is no longer a surprise to me; yet it upsets me every time.  As a (bad) habit, I told two friends whom I met on the way home: "I just want to die now". As a (bad) habit, I often thought of not getting a good grade for a class and, (a worse habit) consequently, I worried about not getting into grad school, and (my worst habit) I started to wonder how I would achieve my life goals in that scenario. This happens every time. I don't know since when my mind has started to have the illusion that my life is perfectly arranged on a straight line, and my only job is to make sure that I walk on that line. Apparently it's an illusion; it's not how life works.

How does it work, then?

It fails me sometimes. Many times.
It makes me struggle, and after all the effort, it leaves me with nothing, sometimes.
It tricks me into thinking I've got it all under control, then it tells me "who do you think you are?".

Those are the times when I don't look up. Those are the times I would just stop believing in my ideals for a while, stop trusting my ability. Those are the times that people around just seem like giants, so grand, so great, so brilliant that I would never be able to catch up. I don't know why even though I knew I should not feel this way, yet I do it anyway every time life fails me. Why though? There are many other things which I'm strong at, and these exams are not the only thing that defines me, nor my success, nor my failure.

After all, these sound like I'm trying to make up excuses for failing an exam. Well, there's no excuse for failing, yet there's also no excuse for overlooking the bright side of a failure. Just like an economist put it: "Don't let a recession go to waste", I will try harder. I'll look Up.