(snip)
>But some people who *have* been exposed to "trial by fire" have this habit
>as well, and the "fire" makes it worse, not better. Instead of teaching
>anything constructive, it leads to a kind of mild post-traumatic stress
>disorder-like or learned helplessness-like constellation of feelings. I am
>not arguing against your point at all, that neither response does the
>reputation any good. What I am wondering is, whether you have any
>suggestions for those whom the "trial by fire" burns?
>>Karen
I have sat on the sidelines a bit, as this discussion hits a little close to home. I'm not
afraid to publically say "I don't know" and take the consequences in a presentation. This
is due to an experience I had early on in my career. At a national meeting (back when I was
a BS chemist), I was the opening speaker in a session. After answering several questions, a
man in the front stood up and pointedly asked if I'd ever read the work of X ten years
previous. I hadn't, and said so. He launched into a tirade about how his work had been
overlooked (he was X) and that young misses like me shouldn't be presenting results as if
they were new and just what were the organizers thinking of asking me to speak, etc etc. I
have never before or since seen a fit like the one this person threw, and I had no response.
I just asked for another question, and gratefully went on to answer it, then sat down.
As the session proceeded, X asked the same kind of thing of every speaker-until the session
chair actually asked him to leave if he had no constructive comments (X left and the chair
later apologized to me for the man's behavior). Turns out, I gained a lot of respect from
the people I most wanted respect from by just standing there. And where is Dr. X? Well, I
later found out he was furious at the time because his funding had been cut and he felt his
contributions were being overlooked, but he wasn't and isn't a "nobody"-he still graces the
pages of Science on occasion. I've changed my name and changed fields, and doubt I'll ever
run into him again, but it just goes to show that talent and people skills do not
neccessarily go hand in hand.
I wish I could say I was tough, but the fact was, I was simply amazed at the behaviour and
therefore speechless. Had I been anticipating nasty questions, I think I'd have teared up.
The lesson I learned-if I expect the questioning to be meanspirited, I see it as such. If
I expect good questions, asked out of curiousity, I see most of them as such. I think
Karen's onto something about the re-enforcing effects of our experiences. I've seen graduate
students work themselves into paralysis before they even start a presentation, in
anticipation of being cut to shreds at the end, and it's not because they feel ill prepared.
It's because they've seen it happen to someone else, and as as we all know, it's exceedingly
uncomfortable for everyone. They expect, a bit irrationally, to be the next "victim". And
the minute a question wanders into the unknown, they freeze like a deer in the headlights in
anticipation of what they see as inevitable,and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
After my Dr.X experience, pointed questions at research-in-progress seminars have never
bothered me much. I figure (and someone in the thread has confirmed this with reference to
the fainting student) that if a person misbehaves badly enough or often enough, it's their
reputation, not yours, that suffers. Plus,I respect someone who can stand up there and say,
"Good question! We should look at that." rather than someone who has an answer for
everything, even if they haven't looked at that! So if I respect people who do this, then
that means I respect myself when I do this. That helps me a lot.
What bothers me more is the one-on-one stuff, where there are no "witnesses." Someone
mentioned a lab where people were afraid to talk through research problems for fear of being
seen as ignorant by the PI (and told so, especially in front of others in the lab). I've
seen a few of these labs, and the people who come out of them. In my experience, they (1)
become bitter and quit science or (2) become pillars of strength and persevere through even
those tough projects that one friend referred to as "post-doc killers", turning them into
"cover of Science" projects. There doesn't seem to be a middle ground, and while one can
argue that some people would have succeeded or failed anyway, many in the middle who could
have shown brightly abandon ship instead.
I think you can learn a lot from an experience like these labs, and some of the stuff you
learn is quite helpful in "the real world", but there must be a better way. I think there's
a happy medium between students seeing their advisor as enemy and seeing their advisor as
friend. (In my own case, I'll admit that I saw my graduate advisor as both extremes,
depending on the day, but it all worked out in the end and I hope we see each other as
colleagues now). If you teach someone to swim, then put them in shallow water, then deep
water, that's one thing. If you toss them into the ocean and say "you must swim to survive"
that's another (and they are liable to develop a lifelong fear of water even if they swim).
I don't think anyone on the thread is advocating the latter, but we seem to disagree about
what's involved in teaching someone to "swim."
A long and winding post-time to get back to work!
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Julia Frugoli
Texas A&M University
Department of Plant Pathology & Microbiology
Crop Biotechnology Center
MS# 2123
College Station, TX 77843
409-842-2595
FAX 409-862-4790
"Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom,
which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals
mainly with values. The two are not rivals."
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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