Much like the aforementioned idiom this post is more about perspective than it is about beauty. Since I’ve been in the MPA program I’ve had two interesting encounters with perspective:

1. A change in my perspective

When people used to ask me how I did on an exam or an assignment I would always compare to myself, generally my past performance or a goal. So someone might say “how did you do?” and I would think about how my performance stacked up and say “I did well” or “I didn’t do as well as I would have liked”.

In this program I have no idea what “well” means. Objectively my percentage of comprehension/retention of presented material is about 75% which to me seems awful, but we’re comparing apples to oranges in terms of amount material presented.

On the bright side the program does provide an alternative measure of performance: comparison to others. This is a less attractive option to me than self comparison because the people here are really smart, but it’s what I’ve got to live with. Now that I’m getting a better grasp of the curving system I always compare myself to the mean. It’s a very strange adjustment to make statements relative to average because historically average has never been my goal, but I try to remember that in this crowd average is still pretty good.

2.Considering the perspective of others

I am one of those iPhone people. I own it. I love it. I always have it. I always use it. [If you are in this crowd too, check out the Longhorn app

It is a great tool, but it’s also a great toy. So when people see me using it they don’t know if I am using it to support the task at hand or as a distraction.

My first realization of this problem came one day during lecture. When  typing notes on my phone and I noticed my professor giving me looks like “why are you texting so obviously right in front of me” I wanted to explain “don’t worry, I’m just taking notes” but it wasn’t appropriate. I had a similar experience at office visits. In between interviews I would normally read the newspaper on my phone, but the problem is when the interviewer comes in they may think that I am doing things on my phone that are inappropriate to be doing in an interview and I would have no way of telling them “Look! I’m just reading the paper!”

I’m currently having to go the old school route of carrying around notepads and magazines just so people will know that what I’m doing isn’t rude. If anyone has any suggested solutions please share!