Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Now that I think about it, as much as I've…
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2002 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Now that I think about it, as much as I've disliked the bother of taking the GRE and so on, I've felt quite exhilirated in several situations where I've cared much less about my performance than others did. It's about the power differential. The more you care about what others, or a test, can do to you, the more power they have over you. It's nice to be able to look around and stretch and not care how well I perform and feel comparatively relaxed and powerful.
Of course, whenever I run into someone who feels like that on a regular basis, I get annoyed, but that's just because I was disempowered as a child.
