[eli_gottlieb]

I'm engaged to a "good student". She was damn well and fully aware, her entire life, that the signalling mechanism is very different from actually learning useful material.

As a two grad-student couple, we have mutual academic envy. I envy that she finds it easy to memorize large sums of material and pander to the system. She envies that I find it easy to acquire an intuition for the material I really care about. I envy that she's "saving the world" as an ecologist. She envies that I can make a good living out of my field.

Welp.