Thursday, February 27, 2020

Oh That Academic Audacity: Reddit AITA Edition

This made its rounds this week and it inspired me to create a new category on my blog called #OhThatAcademicAudacity where I will be posting the ridiculous events I hear/read of going on in Academia. Also feel free to send me submissions. 
If you don't know about the AITA thread on Reddit, it's a place for people to ask "Am I The Asshole" and explain their case - in this case the OP (original poster) is definitely an asshole.





AITA for making my graduate student walk upstairs after knee surgery.

"I am an assistant professor at a university with an office on the ninth floor of a building. I hold regular meetings with graduate assistants, and they are expected to attend unless they have a really good excuse. Failure to attend results in less involvement in research projects. This system is common here, and I must abide by it to maintain the respect of my department.

Today, unfortunately, the elevator is out of order. My assistant had surgery three weeks ago and has a brace. She asked if we could meet in a lower floor communal area. There are people who walk in and out of there, and I feel like it would be too distracting. I told her that meetings are always in my office, as planned, and unless she had a statement from a physician that she could not go up the stairs, I would not change the location or cancel the meeting. I have no doubt that she can make it up the stairs, it would just take her longer than usual. She could arrive at the building earlier.

Apparently she complained to the department head. I talked to her (the head), and she said that it is my right to hold meetings wherever I find them appropriate. However, she also said, and I quote, "it seems like a dick move." I was taken aback at the inappropriate language from my head, and I am considering filing a complaint against her with the ombudsman. Sounds like someone who will seek retaliation if she is so quick to make gender-based slurs against people. I do not think I will file a Title IX claim against her, but that is not off the table. I told her I did not appreciate her words, and she said, "Just consider what I said. You can require the meeting where you would like."

I did require it in my office. My assistant made it up. She did not seem to be in any more pain as normal. We had the meeting. I reminded her that I allowed her three weeks off of meetings, which is a big deal to me. I expected her next week whether or not the elevator is repaired. This is an inconvenience to me, as well. I am not a big fan of walking up nine flights of stairs in dress shoes, but I have to do it.

A colleague of mine told me he would have just met her downstairs, but he did not think I made a "dick move." Another colleague told me that she would have never done what I did. I feel like they might be talking about me behind my back. Hopefully it is not the department head spreading rumors, but I will surely find out.

I would like your opinions on my behavior but also on the behavior of my department head, as I think most would agree that even if what I did was unconventional, what she did was much worse. Thank you in advance."


What do you think of this situation? 
I personally have no words. At least no coherent words. Like how is this even a question? Like how is someone even questioning if they're an asshole in this situation? But then again we all know plenty of academics who don't exactly know how to ask questions (you know the ones... those who use Q&A sessions as a time to make comments). 

What audacious BS have you seen in Academia lately? Comment below. 

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

On not feeling guilty - sick day edition

I took a sick day today. I've been sniffling and sneezing since Friday and I'm just plain exhausted. My sleep is out of whack probably because I haven't been able to properly breathe. I dragged myself in yesterday (albeit late) because I had class to attend and an exam to proctor. But today, I just had a busy day of experiments. But you know what those experiments could do? They could wait. So I emailed my PI and let him know I wouldn't be in today. Instead of lab work I slept. I mean really slept. I slept from midnight last night until noon today. Then I took an hour nap from 1-2pm. My body obviously needed sleep.
Credit: chibird.com

Do I feel guilty? A little but I know I shouldn't. And I know I feel a lot less guilty than I would have in past years so I'm making progress, right? Right?

I am a firm believer that I don't need to justify my sick day to anyone. When I request sick days I've always just simply stated a "I will not be in today" with no details on why. So why is it I feel the need to justify taking one to myself? I worked 14 hours Saturday and I even popped in Sunday for a bit to do tissue culture (I actually had a longer day planned for then too but I was so exhausted). Also I know when I'm exhausted I make mistakes in my work - so why am I going to go in to slog through an experiment that I'm likely going to have to repeat again? It's best just to rest. I know this so where is this cognitive dissonance coming from?

While I'm on the subject, here are other reasons you should take time off/rest without feeling guilty:
You're too stressed to actually get anything done. Take a step back.
You're feeling sick or exhausted. You will recover better and faster with rest so the sooner you do it the better.
You're no longer being productive.  
To spend time with your significant other and friends. Spending quality time is crucial to the success of your relationships. And your relationships are crucial to your social support network to get through grad school.

What else should I add to this list? Do you feel guilt for taking time off?

Okay, well I'm going to do some reading and writing as a way to help ease this guilt. 

Friday, February 14, 2020

Happy Valentine's Day!

Credit: @redpenblackpen

Happy Valentine's Day!

I know a lot of people hardly consider this a holiday or grumble about it being a conspiracy for greeting card companies, whatever, blah blah blah. But what I see this holiday is as a reminder to celebrate love. And not just romantic love but the love of friendships, family and self-love. 

I know you other grad students can be bad at self-love so let me yell at you for a moment and remind you to TAKE SOME TIME TO LOVE YOURSELF TODAY!

Or maybe tomorrow when all the chocolate goes on sale! ;)


Saturday, February 8, 2020

Why & How to Curate a #RoCur

Don't know what a #RoCur is? Check out my previous post: What is a #RoCur

I recently curated both @RealScientists and @IAmSciComm (see recaps here and here). I didn't mean to book them back to back and I also more or less signed up for them later in the spring but they asked me to curate earlier and I was a sucker for not saying no. Curating isn't exactly an easy job, it does take some time and effort but it's well worth it.

Reasons to curate a RoCur:
  • It's a short commitment, typically only one week
  • Opportunity to reach a wider audience
  • It's a great way to practice your scicomm skills 
  • Get feedback from a different audience
  • Increase followers on your personal account
How to curate a RoCur:
  • Get over thinking you're not "good enough" to curate because you are - that's just impostor syndrome talking.
  • Sign up to curate! Commit! Commit! Commit!
  • Promote your curation on your own personal twitter account.
  • Change the profile photo to you and other details to you (varies depending on the rocur).
  • Introduce yourself! Who are you? What do you do? How did you get to your current position?What are you working on? Do you have other hobbies? What does a day in your life look like?
  • Share! Do you have relevant links or articles to share? Share links your publications, blog posts, etc.
  • Use photos, memes and gifs. Tweets with media have been shown to get 3x as much interaction!
  • Use hashtags. Hashtags increase exposure and potential for interaction. Many events and discussions have associated hashtags. Use trending hashtags like #scicomm #PhDChat
  • Interact! Respond to people's responses. RT people's responses.
  • Ask the audience questions. Try a poll!
  • You don't have to tweet 24/7 but being present on the account is best for interaction. But you can also schedule using TweetDeck.
  • When it's time to sign off thank them for a great time & redirect them to your personal account if they want more.
P.S. You can be simultaneously signed in to multiple Twitter accounts now both on the app and on a desktop.


P.P.S. Please sign up for @Neurotweeps if you're in neuro because that's the RoCur I run and getting curators is super difficult! To sign up email neurotweeps (at) gmail (dot) com

Look what I found

And old blog of mine. Is writing about this meta? I guess it doesn't matter. Be prepared for this to just be a bunch of discombobula...