(Translated from the Chinese version by ChatGPT.)

Let’s continue talking about the issue of reward that we discussed in the previous post.

My emotions are easily affected by small things. In the past, I was very easily controlled by my emotions. After several years in college, after seeing a lot of data, I gradually became less naive and less immature. I started to see the two sides of almost everything, and I became more rational in how I think about problems. But many times, there is a huge gap between thinking and acting. Knowing how to think does not mean that the rational side of my brain can completely conquer the emotional side, or that I can always act in the way I know I should act.

In fact, in the past, these two parts of me felt almost completely disconnected. Most of the time, I was lost in abstract thinking, but rarely translated it into action. During undergrad, I tried many times, but I could never really move from theory to application. I felt that the gap between theory and practice was huge, and I did not know how to close it. For example, when doing theory, I could write a rigorous proof with no holes, and that kind of “perfection” made me happy. But when doing application, I could already find countless flaws during the planning stage — that is, during the “thinking” stage — to the point where I completely lost the motivation to take action.

Over the past few years, I have intentionally trained myself to become more accepting of imperfection. I can still think comprehensively and see all sides of a problem, but I am no longer as picky or perfectionistic as before. I no longer expect theory and application to match perfectly. In this way, for the theoretical part, I can still see everything, but I will not become paralyzed just because I have seen too much. I used to be an extreme idealist. Now I am in a more balanced state.

When it comes to job searching, putting aside the technical rounds, the rest is almost entirely outside of my control. Much of it is about “vibe.” If someone wants to hire me, they may still hire me even if my presentation is bad, even if I did not do any special preparation. If someone does not want to hire me, then even if I prepare a lot and rehearse many times, I may still receive a rejection for reasons that are never made clear. What remains is endless self-consuming rumination: Was one of my answers wrong? Was my presentation not clear enough?

This kind of vibe should be mutual. But in an employment relationship, when I really want to find a job, the relationship between me and the other side is no longer equal. I often forget my own feelings and start hoping that even places that did not feel quite right will still give me an offer.

In relationships with people, I think I also went through a similar stage. For many, many years, I had almost no friends, so I wished I could become friends with the people around me, even with some people who did not feel quite right. At that time, I was not on equal footing with them. In order to please others, I kept changing myself, trying to fit in. But I later realized that if I had entered the wrong group, no matter how much I reshaped myself, I would never truly belong. After coming to the U.S. and making some friends, I finally started to pay attention to my own feelings, instead of hoping that everyone would simply not dislike me. I later learned that in the right “group,” I do not need to change myself.

In my previous work experiences, I was in an unequal position most of the time — for example, when looking for internships. As long as someone wanted me, I was happy. Even when something felt a little “off,” I still went, because I did not have many better options. And in the end, the experience often turned out to be not very good.

During my first year of PhD, I consciously trained myself to be rational instead of making decisions purely based on feelings. Now, I have learned to accept the emotional side of myself more peacefully. In the past, I made decisions as if I were solving a math problem, trying to organize my entire chain of thought into something perfectly coherent. At that time, my decision-making model prototype was also very primitive: either accept everything, reject everything, or use some rule-based method to make decisions. Later, I realized that whether I set the threshold to 1 or 0, my classification model was still bad. Eventually, I started relying more directly on feelings — making friends based on vibe. Now, I rarely feel troubled by interpersonal relationships anymore.

After writing all of this, my emotions have mostly calmed down. Perhaps I can face the upcoming interviews and results with a more peaceful mindset.

If I get rejected, then maybe fate is telling me: this is just not the right place. Just like relationships between people, forcing something that is not meant to be will only lead to bad consequences.

Fate, coincidence, probability — does God play dice?