are you the secretary?

[Sherry L Anderson]

SL Forsburg (susan_forsburg at qm.salk.edu) wrote:
: Bharathi Jagadeesh wrote:
: > 
: > I don't get really upset about this, but it is annoying. One of
: > the things that I find most annoying about it is that I really
: > don't want to be snobby -- I think that there are technicians,
: > animal care personnel, and summer students who all do excellent
: > jobs, and I don't want to put them down. But, on the other hand,
: > I do wanted to be given the same status as my white male colleagues. 
: I agree with this;  I don't want to put down my secretary, who
: is very good at her job and makes my life much easier!   but
: I AM annoyed that after all this time, these assumptions (that
: young woman can't be professor/PI/in charge) still exist.
: What I find most depressing is that they exist among the students,
: even the women.  Arent they supposed to be young enough to escape 
: such assumptions?

I'm flabbergasted that people do this.  I'm an undergrad and I would 
never make and have never made such assumptions.  I would never ask where 
Professor So-and-So is.  I would say "Professor So-and-So?".  That way if 
it is the prof I'm looking for I haven't insulted them and if it's not 
the prof I'm looking for there is no reason why that person should feel 
insulted.  Of course this just might be because at Moo U you can never 
really tell for sure who is and isn't a prof just by looking at them.  My 
first semester here I had a *very* young math prof who moonlighted in a 
rock band, a young oriental female professor and a Birkenstock and jeans 
wearing hippy professor.  And they got weirded and weirder after that... :)

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Sherry Anderson			               We are made to fight
Mad Scientist				and fuck and talk and fight again
Philosopher Chick			    and sit around and laugh
Bitch Extraordinaire				 until we choke
sanderso at uoguelph.ca
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