In graduate school, early on, I once overheard a classmate talking in her office as I walked by. She didn't know I was there. She was gossiping about me to a group of our classmates & said I was the affirmative-action student... Rationally, I know it was absurd, but hearing how she & maybe others saw me hurt real bad... I stopped joking about being a slacker. I tripled the number of projects I was involved with. Furthermore, I was excellent most of the time. Furthermore, I fell short some of the time. Furthermore, I made sure I got good grades. Furthermore, I made sure my comprehensive exams were solid. Furthermore, I wrote conference proposals & had them accepted. Furthermore, I published. Furthermore, I designed an overly ambitious research project for my dissertation that kind of made me want to die. No matter what I did, I heard that girl, that girl who had accomplished a fraction of a fraction of what I had, telling a group of our peers I was the one who did not deserve to be in our program.

Bad Feminist