You can't finish grad school — can too – can not — can — can't — can

In my secret garden, battles between Superior Me and Inferior Me are determined by the degree of public commitment made by the former.

Superior Me knows I can achieve nearly anything I set my mind to, including getting a master's degree, but he admits I sometimes lose focus on long-term goals. That’s why he took a cue from Vaidyanathan and Aggarwal (2005) and announced to the world I would enter Franklin University's MCM program. He's relying on "self-predicted ... (though not my) normal (academic) behaviour” (p. 234) for my success. He knows I can’t fail now that I’m committed to friends and family.

Superior Me is why even as a short-legged, stubby guy, I have run five or six marathons. He tells people about some of my personal goals and to be consistent with his blabbing, I end up training and finishing 26.2 miles. Sometimes he's a no-good @#$%&!

Inferior Me, on the other hand, survives on my academic "low domain-specific self-concept" (Moller and Koller, p. 70) sown during my lengthy undergraduate career. I failed or underachieved in many ventures because of my limited abilities. He tells me any success was due to outside influences.

All that commotion coming from my secret garden — you can't hear it? — are those guys fighting. It's early in the struggle for the master's degree, so the outcome may not revolve around the material, but which Me is the most consistent.

References

Vaidyanathan, R., & Aggarwal, P. (2005). Using commitments to drive consistency: Enhancing the effectiveness of cause-related marketing communications. Journal of Marketing Communications,11(4), 231-246.

Moller, J., & Koller, O. (2000). Spontaneous and reactive attributions following academic achievement. Social Psychology of Education, 4, 67-86.