One day two years ago, I was having water cooler conversation with a biochemistry grad student. She was talking about the looks that she gets from medical students working in our building.
"It's like they think they're better than me! In smarts, I could take on any one of them. We just have that curiosity that that they don't! And that's why we chose this path."
She wasn't bitter, but she was a little indignant. Sure, she's probably right. The context is that science graduates have two primary options these days - graduate school or medical school. And grad students are a curious bunch, if I say so myself. I remember this person to be brilliant. But her reaction is a kind of feeling that never requires a full conversation in order to percolate.
Many conversations about identity start this way. These days, I overhear Korean Americans here talking this way all the time. Someone has some momentary experience passing by another person. A quick summary is conducted during which there is an understanding, a feeling of judgment.
It's like a form of telepathy, but it doesn't truly matter if the judgment actually exists. Or does it? Whether the feeling exists in the field of socially transmitted thoughts or whether it exists only within the mind of the thinker, who can say that one is more real than the other?
