In article <35A4DE27.1A39FEF4 at nospamsalk.edu>,
S L Forsburg <forsburg at nospamsalk.edu> wrote:
>> Karen Lona Allendoerfer (ka143 at columbia.edu)
>>> Thanks, Susan, for the valuable advice! This is the sort of thing that
>> really ought to be taught explicitly and systematically in grad school, but
>> for the most part, isn't, unless you're fortunate enough to get a good and
>> caring PI.
>>Oh, I'm not that. I'm a hazer, remember?
No, actually, I don't remember that. I'm sorry you were hurt by those
words; they' weren't mine.
>Try it when its anonymous on your grant reviews or paper reviews and you
>are rejected for funding or publication as a result. That's
>loads o' fun.
Umm, I've already tried it. Yes, it's loads o' fun.
>>> I don't think that any of us on the
>> "anti-hazing" side want to be patted on the head, told "there there all's
>> well," or have our hands held. We just think that ordinary civility and
>> courtesy ought to carry the day.
>>The point Deirdre and I are making is that it doesn't.
Well, I guess I'm not sure that anyone here didn't know that already.
What pushed my button, honestly, probably has to do with my own school
experiences. I never, not in elementary school, or any other kind of school,
had a teacher to tried to build self-esteem, hand-held, or rubber stamped
anything. I readily admit that my eductional experience was more than
a little weird: being two years younger than everyone else, being in
high school at 12, starting with a Catholic kindergarten where the nuns
taped kids' mouths shut, and ending with a bio teacher who used to read
all our grades aloud and hand back our weekly tests in reverse order of
how we did, all the while telling us how grateful we would be when we
got to college.
Grad school, in all honesty, seemed to me like a bit of a breather after
high school.
Sometimes I think about my high school bio teacher, even still. In many
ways, he was a great teacher. Every year we had about 20 students take the
AP exam, and 15 of them would get 5's, and the other 5 would get 4's. He
was funny, he knew his stuff. He gave us a lot of work to do, in order
that we would be prepared for how much work we were going to face in college.
And for all that, I am very grateful. His class did prepare me for
college level work. The excitement of the material that he taught played
a role in my deciding to major in biology.
And yet, even 15 years later, I have a hard time not cringing when I
think about the grade-grubbing that he encouraged, the public posting
and discussion of how we were all doing, and such. It was a part of
the larger climate in the school at the time (the physics teacher
seated us according to our grades on tests, in addition to the public
posting), so I can't really lay it all at his feet.
Given how much has probably changed in the public schools since I
sent through them (class of '82), it's hard for me to know what to make
of the experience and what constructive lessons there might be to learn
>From it.
Even if the "tough but fair" model is basically a good one, I still think
that the self-esteem concerns are not something to be dismissed with
anger, contempt, or sarcasm.
My best friend in high school ran away from home. At the time, she
cited academic pressure. She would bring home a report card with a 94
average, and her parents would tell her that was a failure. I saw
her again recently, 15 years later (she found me on the internet), and
she regrets having done that. Yet it wasn't totally clear to either
of us what she should have done. Stayed at home, yes, but how to
have done that without feeling so bad and inadequate all the time?
Having gotten through with my share of emotional scars myself, I
didn't feel qualified to give her advice.
>>Related issue: one of my other rules is to ask intellectually tough
>(ie, challenging) questions but never be rude. However,
>many people will immediately
>assume an intellectually tough question is aggressive and mean,
>espeically if it comes from a woman.
I agree this assumption shouldn't be made; this particular situation
isn't something that I find I run into very often.
Karen
I think we do need to examine
>our own kneejerk responses and make sure we are not projecting our
>own stereotypes onto an actually well-meant situation.
>>--
>-susan
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>S L Forsburg, PhD forsburg at salk.edu>Molecular Biology and Virology Lab
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>time to speak for anyone else."
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