Paul Cantrell
@grimalkina
I once again long for a “dislike” button.
I have a running theory, not yet disproven, that this particular form of assholery — from anyone but especially from faculty — is rooted in large part in people’s shame and embarrassment about their own inability to teach.
(Teaching is a distinct skill, it’s difficult and takes lots of time & struggle to learn, people wrongly imagine expertise alone is sufficient for teaching and then find themselves floundering…do the math from there)
Dr. Cat Hicks
Sometimes I'm like why did it take me so long to try R and realize it's not that hard and then other times I'm like oh yeah on one of the first big research projects I was ever on a tenured faculty sneeringly said "well do you think you can calculate an average? Can you at least do that?" when I asked if I could sit with the main author doing the modeling to learn and then they disinvited me from all the analysis meetings
Dr. Cat Hicks
You have to realize gatekeeping isn't passive, it's not just neutrally happening, it's a fully active 24/7 activity for some people and those people really enjoy it. Sometimes I want to scream when people passive voice the whole thing like "women....are discouraged...from coding" BY WHOM. BY WHOM. IN WHAT WAY.
Paul Cantrell
@grimalkina
(This is in addition to the most obvious and more important explanations of misogyny, hierarchy-building, bullying, cruelty, etc etc)
Dr. Cat Hicks
@inthehands I'm not remembering their name but my wife went to a workshop from someone who said "good mentors show up healed." This is deeply important I feel
Paul Cantrell
@grimalkina
omg yes, so good
Healed or at least healing.
chris martens
@grimalkina @inthehands some of us may never be all the way healed (in part because we had a lot of experiences similar to OP along the way). but i have so much frustration with my peers & elders who won’t even acknowledge that there’s a cycle to break
Paul Cantrell
@pencilears @grimalkina
Agreeing with the second paragraph, I can offer ample disproof of the first among my excellent colleagues. (Take for example the story of David Bressoud.)
✨pencilears✨
@inthehands @grimalkina all the people in higher education who are good at teaching, but hate doing research, are at the community college level teaching people who need it.
At the university level you can get away with bad pedagogy because you can always wave your hand and say "oh well I suppose some people just aren't cut out for the rigors of academia" when students ask for clarification on your syllabus.
Paul Cantrell
@pencilears @grimalkina
Agreed there, there are community colleges out there that are amazing!! And so often overlooked
✨pencilears✨
@inthehands @grimalkina no worries, I had a good experience being a student at my community college so I'm only speaking from that
Dr. Cat Hicks
@chrisamaphone @inthehands yeah I think that's fair and I don't think this person really meant "mentors are in every way perfect and fully healed" but much more like, a definition of healing that meant "healed enough to do this particular kind of work without accidentally damaging others"
Paul Cantrell
@grimalkina @chrisamaphone
Seems like acknowledging that the potential to do damage exists in the first place may be at least half the battle.
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.