This Seems Like a Good Time to Mention That I Hate Your Work

Have you ever been attacked in a rather impolite way while giving a professional talk?

OK, so "attacked" is a bit of hyperbole. Let's say instead "severely criticized" or perhaps even "insulted". A few notches down would be "asked a question that may have been intended to humiliate you."

I have! Recently! In this case, the question/comment was of the "Your work is totally worthless and a waste of your government's money" sort.

But first, let's go back in time. Not long before I gave my very first talk at a conference as a graduate student, a certain scientist asked me an informal question in conversation. I said I did not know the answer. An hour or so later, he asked me the exact same question at the end of my talk, in front of a few hundred people.

I thought: What a jerk. I did not know him very well, although I had read some of his papers, so I didn't know what his motivation was in asking me a question he knew I could not answer. It could be that he wanted to humiliate me, although that is not my preferred explanation. My favored hypothesis is that he thought it was such a great question, he didn't actually care whether I knew the answer or not, he just wanted to get points for asking it in public. I don't know for sure, but I must say that I was never able to summon much enthusiasm for conversing with him, much less working with him, after that episode.

Since then, it has been my general impression that some people who attempt to ask "take-down" kinds of questions or who make vague derogatory comments ("Your science is completely worthless") aren't actually concerned that Science is being harmed by a misguided or ignorant person. Instead, they are seeking attention and just enjoying the sound of their own brilliance. That is: Enough about you, person who just gave a talk! Now listen to what I have to say even though I don't actually have much to say that is interesting, relevant, or possibly even sane!

But I could be wrong about that. And I don't really want to spend any more time discussing why some people are jerks in this particular way. (And I don't mean to imply that everyone who asks an aggressive question or makes a negative comment is an unreasonable jerk. In some cases these questions and comments are well deserved and useful.)

Anyway, when a very outspoken rude person attempted a take-down kind of question/comment during a talk I gave at a conference recently, I totally did not care. I responded with basic explanations and opinions to his "concerns", and that was that. What surprised me was the number of people who came up to me afterwards to tell me that I shouldn't let it bother me, I shouldn't be upset, I shouldn't worry etc. In fact, I was not bothered, upset, or worried at all.

I appreciated the concern, but then I started to worry that I might have seemed upset when this is not at all what I felt. I don't think I said or did anything that could be interpreted as my being upset when I was up on the stage dealing with the obnoxious comments. I felt quite calm, perhaps a bit impatient, but mostly I thought the whole thing was absurd. It was not a big deal. It upset me to think that people might have thought I was upset when I wasn't. Does that make any sense?

Perhaps people were projecting? That is, they would have felt upset if the Big Guy had gone after them like that?

And maybe these aggressive people serve a useful purpose? Perhaps it actually helped me in the long run that I was "vaccinated" against aggressive questions at my very first professional talk -- after that, I expect it. There will be jerks. They are just part of the landscape. Water off a duck etc. etc.?

Have you ever been experienced what you considered an inappropriate question or comment -- either in content or tone -- during a professional talk? Were you upset?

Have you ever experienced a rude question or comment during a talk?
	No
	Yes
pollcode.com free polls

Professor Babysitter

Earlier this year, I got a panicked call from a younger relative who was about to give birth to her second child. The baby was about 10 days early and everything was fine, but my relative and her husband had no real plan for a babysitter for their 2.5 year old in the event that the new baby came early. That is, no real plan other than calling me and asking me to take care of their daughter.

I must admit that my first thought was not "Of course! Just let me know what I can do to help!" It was more like "Me?? Are you serious?"

They were serious. They selected me because I fit the following criteria: (1) female, (2) relative, (3) parent, and (4) I could get to their location sooner than other female relatives who have kids. Never mind that my daughter is in high school and I have not taken care of a little kid in many many years..

These relatives are a bit traditional (hence their criteria), but what could I do? It didn't seem the right time to be annoyed that they would never ask a male relative to take a day off from work. My relative is a stay-at-home mom and has never had a career. To her, only another mom could take care of her daughter, and her preference was for that mom to be me.

My mind boggled at the number of people I was going to inconvenience at work by canceling or postponing meetings and other events -- undergrads, grads, staff, colleagues, a dean, an off-campus group with which I have been working -- but I sent off a raft of emails and raced off to babysit for an unknown amount of time.

I did make one quick stop on the way -- I ran into a store and acquired paper, crayons, stickers, crackers, juice.. just in case. Then I went to the hospital where my relative was in labor, her husband was freaking out, and their daughter was sitting strapped in a stroller that was soaking wet because her dad had not changed her diaper for many hours. Before leaving their apartment, he had grabbed exactly 2 books and one paisley-patterned stuffed animal of uncertain species. I was glad I had brought some supplies.

I asked my relative-in-law what his daughter might want to eat for lunch and he said, and I quote, "I don't know. Her mom always feeds her."

So my babysitting adventure began. Yikes it has been a while since I spent so much time taking care of a 2.5 years old. It was exhausting even though my little relative is an extremely cute, affectionate, and (mostly) well-behaved kid.

It turns out that my babysitting had to be confined to the hospital waiting room, lobby, and cafeteria, as my relatives wanted their daughter nearby. This was challenging, but fortunately there were things to see and discuss, such as a decorative pond that we agreed should have had fish in it (but didn't), some religious statuary that I found difficult to explain (so I just made stuff up), and waiting room brochures about some rather adult topics (I made up more stuff).

In fact, we had lots of fun playing weird little games with stickers, rhyming words, and the bizarre stuffed animal her dad had brought even though it is one she "hates". I felt that her hatred of this animal was justified, and that this allowed me to throw it in the air without fear of causing her emotional trauma. In fact, throwing this dog(?) around occupied us happily for at least 20 minutes of that very long day.

It turned out that the 2 books her dad had hurriedly packed were both bedtime books and she absolutely refused to read them during the day because it was not bedtime. This was reasonable. I had brought my iPad, so I started downloading books onto it: ones I remembered my daughter had liked. When my daughter was that age, we only read physical books, so this was new for me, reading e-books with a little kid. We spent quite a lot of time reading, then we enhanced the adult-topic brochures with stickers of frogs and ladybugs.

Taking care of this little girl definitely brought back memories. When we were playing by the fishless pool, she said "no fish" about 57 billion times, over and over and over. I tried to be very Zen about it but at some point I realized I was going to go mad, so the next time she said "no fish", I said "no whales". This is exactly what I used to do with my daughter lo those many years ago, but I didn't know how this particular little girl would respond. She stared at me, her eyes huge, her brain churning, and then carefully said "no seals". So I said "no dolphins". We worked our way through every sea creature we could think of, and then, miraculously, my relative-in-law texted me to say that the new baby had arrived! Yay!

But I was not done babysitting. I was not done because my relative-in-law would not yet tell us whether the baby was a boy or a girl because he first had to call his parents and tell them and then he had to call his parents-in-law and tell them and then he could tell his daughter and then he could tell me. He asked us to go back to the waiting room so we would not overhear the "gender reveal" in his phone conversations with the grandparents. Is this normal? Is this some tradition of which I have thus far been unaware? We went back to the waiting room and threw the paisley dog(?) around some more until it was our turns to hear the news (it was a boy).

Eventually the new family was united and even though I think they would not have minded if I continued to babysit for the next few hours or weeks, I decided my work there was done. My relative-in-law was very kind in thanking me for helping them out, but he also told me that he thought the experience had been very good for me. In some ways he was right, but when he said that I realized I needed to go back to my own planet as soon as possible.

What, if anything, did I learn?

It is possible to miss a busy day of work and survive, although there are times when I have doubted this. I am sorry that others were inconvenienced, but I am glad I was able to help out my relative in her time of need.

I can't imagine wanting to live the way these relatives live (I am sure they feel the same about me). Mom takes care of kids; Dad works. Dad doesn't even now how to feed or change his daughter (and now his son). And yet, I like them. They are nice people. And their daughter is a happy, smart, busy little kid.

I am glad my daughter is a teenager. I have enjoyed every age that she has been; every age has been my favorite. I am not at all nostalgic for her baby-years.

Not The End of Men Quite Yet

Not long ago, a colleague discussed with me the recently-concluded faculty search in his department. His department decided to hire a male candidate, and my colleague told me he was relieved. In fact, he said to me, "It's so good to know that men can still get hired. I thought we could only hire women, so it's nice to know that men can still get hired." This statement seemed a bit bizarre to me for several reasons, including the fact that the department in question had no female assistant professors at the time of this statement. 

It is strange enough that someone would say this to me (but somehow they do anyway), but what does it mean, if anything? Of course, I hope it does not mean that when a woman is hired, some will think that she was hired mostly/entirely because she is a woman and the department finally had to hire one of those. And if anyone does think that, I hope it does not affect how they treat their new colleague and how they view her work as a professor. (I know enough of the context of this particular situation to know that there are unlikely to be problems in that particular case.)

Nevertheless, as long as there are people who believe that an unbroken streak of hiring men somehow means that men can no longer get faculty positions (in STEM fields), the eventual hiring of a female professor is a situation that calls for vigilance -- by administrators and by faculty -- to make sure any woman hired under such circumstances is not at a disadvantage from the very beginning.

Some Of Them Are Very Bright

As happens from time to time, a science-man having a conversation with me about science, or whatever, will feel the need to establish his I-can-work-with-women creds, even though this is apropos of nothing other than that he is having a conversation with a female scientist (me) at the time, and so he will mention his sincere opinion that a woman or women he worked with is/are actually quite smart. Some of them are even very bright (I heard that one today in an otherwise apparently normal conversation).

Also in a recent conversation of this sort, a science-man told me that he once had to work with a woman who had -- according to what many people told him -- a reputation for being very difficult. He felt that this was a common trait in successful women, and although many successful women realize this and therefore keep a low profile and choose to work behind the scenes (can we call that leaning back?), especially after they get into their late 30s, for some reason this woman chose to stay visible and to work openly with the big male guns even though she was clearly in her 40s (I am not making this up). He did not use the b-word, but he did use the word "shrew" a few times, but -- guess what?!! -- he got along with her just fine. Every once in a while she would start to go shrew on him (I just made up that phrase, it is not a direct quote), but he stayed calm and patient and she would calm down too and they ended up working well together. Yay. 

I do not think less of these men for their misguided attempts to impress me with their progressive opinions of the Female Intellect and/or bizarre hypotheses about the Female Personality in Early Middle Age, but neither am I impressed, just so you know.

Of Course It's True That Professors Grade Easier Than TAs

Last week when I was in a cafe waiting for my mediumskimicedmocha, I overhead one student say to another, "Of course it's true that professors grade easier than TAs", and the other student agreed with that statement. 

Of course! I rather liked this indication that we professors might actually become nicer with time, as opposed to more cranky and mean.

But do you agree with these students? (ignoring the 57 million variables for which we cannot scientifically or otherwise account in discussing this issue now in this blog post and comments).

Some considerations:

- If you used to be a teaching assistant and are now a professor, assuming that you have even a shred of objectivity about this issue, do you think you are an "easier" grader now than when you were a TA?

- If you are a professor now and you teach a class with teaching assistants, do you think you are an easier grader than your TAs? Is this generally true?

- If you are a teaching assistant now, do you have any idea how your grading "hardness" compares with that of the course instructor(s)?

Over the years, in some classes I have been an easier grader than my TAs and in other classes I have not, but if I had to generalize over my career, I would conclude that (1) I am an easier grader now, as a professor, than I was when I was a TA, and (2) I am commonly (but not in every case) an easier grader than most (but certainly not all) of my TAs. I gauge the latter by how many complaints I get about TA grading and, when faced with a grading dispute, whether I think the TA assigned a reasonable grade or was too harsh. [The latter case creates the tricky situation of needing to be fair to the student without undermining the TA, a topic for another day.]

There are likely many explanations for the TAs-are-more-severe-graders phenomenon, but some obvious ones that spring to mind are:

- We are more idealistic when we are just starting out in a career. We have standards, and these are not as flexible as they become later, when we have been teaching for years and might be more willing to reward a glimmer of knowledge as opposed to being severely disappointed that an answer is not as correct or complete as it should be. That does not necessarily mean that we old(er) professors are jaded and have lower standards (though it may).

- At least at the beginning, when we haven't had much experience as a teaching assistant, we don't have much of a basis for comparison and perhaps not much perspective to guide us in the more subjective aspects of grading things involving writing and equations and diagramming. When I was a TA, it was the rare professor who provided much guidance about grading issues such as partial credit, so I mostly made it up as I went along. I figured/hoped that as long as I was consistent, I couldn't go too far wrong.

- A related explanation: Some inexperienced TAs don't have the confidence to give partial credit for partially-correct answers. I recall a time -- many years ago -- when I (the professor) provided a TA with a detailed answer key to an exam. Fortunately I looked over some of the graded exams before handing them back to the students because I ended up having to re-grade several questions entirely because the TA had been inexplicably harsh. For example, in the answer key that I gave to the TA, I had indicated that the correct answer for one question was something like "kitty cat". That was the complete, official name of the thing that was the answer to the exam question, but it did not occur to me that the TA would give students no points if they only wrote "kitty". I should have written on the answer key that "kitty cat" or "kitty" or "cat" were acceptable for full credit, but it didn't occur to me that the student couldn't deal with this level of variability in student answers. Anyone who wrote one of those words clearly knew the answer, so why take off any (or all) of the points? I think the TA just lacked the confidence, and for some reason didn't even want to ask me about it while he was grading.

Now I am wondering: Assuming that I have become easier as a grader with time, have I plateaued or does the grading-easiness trend continue with time (and with what slope on a grading-easiness vs. time plot)?

Why Did You Say That? (in your talk introduction)

A colleague recently commented to me on the tendency for graduate students to introduce their talks at conference by telling the audience that they are students. I had noticed this some (though certainly not all) grad student do this but hadn't really thought anything of it. My colleague didn't like these "I am a student" introductions because he thought the students were saying it to lower expectations or to try to make it more difficult for people to ask challenging questions.

In most cases, it was obvious from various clues (such as the list of coauthors) or prior knowledge that the speaker was a student, so why mention it?

Perhaps my colleague is right about the motivation of some student speakers, but I think there could also be more positive reasons for why a student would mention their studentness in the introduction of their talk. For example, they could be saying "I'm still a student but I was selected to give a talk to present my excellent results and I am or will soon be looking for a job so please pay attention because I am really good."

A possible argument against that hypothesis is that we couldn't think of any postdocs who mentioned their postdoctoralness in a talk introduction. Presumably this motivation would also be relevant to postdocs, if not even more relevant?

I have no idea what the motivation is because I don't think I ever introduced a talk this way when I was a student. I could be wrong because this was a while ago, but I am reasonably certain it wouldn't have occurred to me to introduce a conference talk this way. Therefore, to find out the answer (or, more likely, the answers), I am asking you, the readers who have done this very thing as students, what your motivation was.

And, to the extent that you can determine this, if you had a specific aim in mentioning your student status, did you achieve this aim?

Life Is Just Unfair To Men

Below is an e-mail message. It seems to refer to a comment (or two) that I did not see, perhaps because they got sent to the spam-box, which I never check. I approve all comments that I see and that are not ads, mysterious links, or obscenity-laden threats. That does not mean that I approve of all comments, just that I don't mind posting things like this. I think they make a dramatic point, though perhaps not the one the author intends.

Dear Female Science Professor:

I notice you haven't published my latest comment.  Some months ago you failed to publish another of my comments which I also thought brought the issues into sharp relief by reversing the roles.

My apologies, the first sentence in paragraph five should read:
"By that same logic, the majority of top scientists, especially in the mathematical sciences have been and should continue to be men."

Do you deny that, with few exceptions (ultra-long-distance swimming being one), the top men are better than the top women at sports?  How can you when the score-sheet says otherwise?  By the same token, how can you deny that the most intelligent men are generally smarter than the most intelligent women, especially when it comes to the maths?

I remember when I was younger watching sports on TV and thinking how unfair it was for the women.  As I grew older, I realized that life was just as unfair to men, only in different ways.  This is why I suggest you read Norah Vincent's book "Self Made Man."  Here is someone who has seen it from both sides and firmly decides that she prefers to be a woman, a conclusion that does not surprise me in the slightest.

As I have been burned by what I now realize is a strong sexual double standard in academia (and not in favour of men) I am not the person to argue these things objectively.  I am still quite filled with rage.  There is, however, a woman on Youtube who argues many of the points I would like to touch on in a way that is very rational and objective.  Her channel is "girlwriteswhat":
https://www.youtube.com/user/girlwriteswhat?feature=g-high-rec

I would suggest you check it out as well as Norah Vincent's book.

Kind regards,

Peter