I think the most optimistic person I’ve ever met is my UC Davis PI; she’s also one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and I think those two traits are related. I didn’t have a very positive outlook on my graduate school projects going in, I’ll be honest, and yet two of the three ideas we worked on went to press and got published in fairly high-impact journals. That’s a pretty good statistic for peer review.
I think about optimism, and how it is almost like being religious, in that it requires practice. When it gets tough—like it does during a PhD program—it’s really hard to stay positive. Throw in a few depressive episodes into the mix and forget about it.
On the surface, pessimistic people are seen as more intelligent, but I think there’s confusion: pessimism is often mistaken for being critical. Intelligent people are critical, but that criticalness has to be justified. Pessimistic people, on the other hand, are just caving into their weakness.
Leave a Reply