Give some incidents from the past when you were young when you misunderstood your parents. What do you think about that now?
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Answer:
when I was writing my dissertation, I had the tendency to invent new technical terms for the phenomena I was studying. I thought I was being clever. I wasn’t, and my dissertation chair called me out on it. My initial reaction was to assume that my brilliance was not being recognized. After thinking about it, however, I realized that even if my new terms were accurate/clever/etc., they weren’t doing what I wanted them to; rather than add clarity, they added confusion.
To this day, I still like the terms I came up with, but I also acknowledge that my adviser’s perspective was accurate and that sometimes it’s best to defer to someone with more experience. I could have just as easily dug my heels in and “won” the argument, but doing so would have added needless conversations to an already long process. That wouldn’t have furthered my work, and if I’m being honest, it would have been annoying to my adviser. While that in and of itself isn’t enough to damage a relationship, it certainly doesn’t help build one in a positive direction.