UI Event sent before Awake()

Is this a bug?

I'm getting OnRectTransformDimensionsChange() messages before Awake(). I can easily work around it, but it seems to violate the implied behaviour contract of MonoBehaviour objects.

The problem for me is that I use Awake() to initialize fields that reference other components on the same object. As I said, I can work around this either by making the connection in the editor or by doing it in OnRectTransformDimensionsChange(), but I prefer to use Awake(). I suspect there are other situations where sending event messages before Awake() would defy expectations.