Jekyll-Hyde Q&A

During the question-and-answer time associated with talks at conferences or in department seminars, have you noticed any difference in how questions are addressed to male vs. female speakers? By "how", I mean things like tone of voice and level of politeness/aggression.

This difference is one of those things that I keep expecting to go away with time as a result of the increase in numbers of women as speakers and audience members. It has definitely decreased in frequency but it has not gone away.

Something I noticed at a conference earlier this year was that audience members were commonly quite polite and encouraging of student presenters (of any gender). The fangs mostly seemed to appear when there was a non-student early-career female speaker: postdocs/research scientists, assistant professors, and even in one case an associate professor.

This is of course a completely unscientific anecdotal subjective observation. Nevertheless, over the years I have observed some mid-career and older male colleagues who consistently go through a sort of Jekyll-Hyde transformation when a younger woman gives a presentation. They are rude, aggressive, patronizing, and make it clear that the answers given to their questions are inadequate and probably wrong. They do not do this with male speakers. Ever.

I know that some male colleagues who also noticed this phenomenon and were uncomfortable about it tried to talk to at least one of these colleagues. I am curious to see if this criticism will somehow sink in and modify behavior.

A concern is that whatever subconscious impressions are triggering these negative reactions to female speakers also seep into reviews of papers and proposals, decisions on hiring and promotion, or any other circumstance involving evaluation of a less public sort. Or perhaps (total musing alert) it is the public nature of the rude questioning of a female speaker that is the (subconscious) goal, and private reviewing of a paper or proposal does not trigger such a reaction. I am just making this up; I have no insights into the psychology of this behavior. I have just seen it in action too many times.

I do not mean to imply that there is an epidemic of disrespect at conferences and seminars; in my academic world, there is not. In fact (silver lining alert) the examples I describe here are perhaps particularly evident today because they have become relatively rare. I am also encouraged by the existence of male allies who notice and speak up.

So: During the question-and-answer time associated with talks at conferences etc., have you noticed any difference in how questions are addressed to male vs. female speakers?

She Would Not Wish This On Her Nieces

From e-mail from a reader (text modified to remove possibly-identifying details):

I had traveled to a conference with some colleagues, including my husband. 

The first person who greeted us was a conference organizer. We introduced ourselves by our full names. It was a small conference and we assumed that, as an organizer, he would have looked at the list of attendees. I was greeted with a broad smile and "Oh, so you're just along for the 'ride'."

Over the next two days, my colleagues, husband, and I lost count of the number of intended and unintended gender-targeted put downs and innuendos.

My career in [this field] spans 25 years and I am often asked to become involved with groups encouraging young women in Science and Engineering. As I would not wish this environment for my own nieces, I am unable to promote STEM as a good choice for females.

Over the years, as I have attended some of the same conferences as my scientist-husband, the assumption that he is attending the conference and that I am his guest ('along for the ride') has occurred a few times, but not recently. This e-mail was a sad reminder that this still occurs. How is it that some people -- and most specifically conference organizers -- have not yet gotten the memo about how The Wife might be a scientist or engineer or mathematician?

Here is a short version of the memo, for handy reference: Don't assume.

Not A First Class Guy

Owing to my frequent travels with a certain airline, I have a certain 'status' that has some nice features that make travel possibly bearable. Every once in a while I have to travel with another airline for which I am a nobody, and I know how soul-sucking it is to deal with the long lines and little seats all crammed together at the back of a plane in which every overhead bin has been (over)stuffed by those allowed to board first.

Anyway, my sympathy for the non-frequent flyers does not extend to my wanting to join them in misery, so I take full advantage of shorter lines and simpler security procedures whenever posssible. However, to get to the Premium Elite Special Place at check-in/security, I have to get past a gate-keeper.

I understand the purpose of the gate-keeper. I see them turn away people who are not allowed in the hallowed grounds of the Premium Elite Special Place and who need to be directed elsewhere. The gate-keeper helps keep the Premium Elite Special Place uncrowded and efficient. I hope they would let someone in who really needed a short line in order to make their flight, but I admit that overall I am glad to be able to get through check-in and/or security in a reasonable amount of time for most flights.

Over the years, I have become resigned to having to show my special-status card and having it scrutinized to make sure that I really am allowed to enter that special zone. I have become resigned to traveling with colleagues who do not have to show their card or who just flash their card quickly to gate agents who then stop me so that I can prove my worthiness to entire the Premium Elite Special Place. This is a very minor inconvenience, and I can usually get over the fleeting feeling of micro-humiliation by reminding myself of the alternative.

And yet this bothered me on my travel this week: As usual, I had to show my card, it was examined closely to make sure that it was not an expired card etc., and I was allowed in. The man behind me saw what I had to do and started to get out his card. The gate-keeper said to him, loudly and with apparent unconcern that I was a meter away and would hear: "I don't need to see YOUR card, sir. You LOOK like a first-class guy."

Memo to Airlines: Consider adding to your training of these gate agents some instructions about not blatantly insulting middle-aged women who do not look like "first-class guys". 

Little did I know that this minor little irritation with a certain airline would be dwarfed by what happened during the rest of the trip, but that is another story.

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.

How To Annoy Your Professor : The Poll

Here it is: the poll based on your responses to my request for annoying questions and behaviors related to student-professor interaction. This was admittedly a one-sided request as it focuses entirely on annoying things students do. I have heard vague rumors that professors can also, from time to time, be annoying, but that is not relevant to our purpose here: to compile a handy list of advice for students to help them succeed in their academic life.

I was very gratified to find that others share my dislike of receiving 27 files all called homework.doc. I have found that if I instruct students about file-naming before the first homework is turned in, the majority of the submitted homework will have student names in the filenames, but if I don't mention it again before each and every homework due-date, the vast majority revert to homework.doc. 

Anyway, based on the comments provided, I have divided the poll into 3 categories: Annoying Questions, Communication, and Miscellaneous. I have not restricted voting to one item/poll, so you don't have to choose if you find some/all of the listed examples highly annoying. I suggest, though, that instead of just checking off all or most of the boxes, that we each attempt to pick our top-3(ish) from each category.

Annoying Questions
	Did I miss anything (important)?
	Will this course be hard?
	Is this going to be on the test?
	Do I need to read the (required) textbook?
	What can I do for extra credit?
	I overslept. When is my make-up exam?
	Can I have your lecture notes?
	Why did you give me a B? (or C etc.)
	Is this right? (before turning in HW or exam)
pollcode.com free polls

Communication
	Calling a professor Mr, Ms, Mrs, Miss
	Men addressed as Professor but not women
	Informal email greeting such as Hey, Hi, Prof (no name)
	Using first name for professor before being told this is OK
	Sending files without name in filename (or file)
	Email with bad spelling, grammar, punctuation etc.
	Emoticons
	Unsigned email (esp if name not clear from email address)
pollcode.com free polls

Misc
	I deserve a higher grade because..
	I put my homework in your mailbox. I don't know why you don't have it.
	Questions that could be answered by reading syllabus
	Entering professor's office without knocking and starting to talk (outside office hours)
	Unconvincing excuses for missed classes, exams, deadlines
	I need you to write me 17 letters of reference by the end of the week.
pollcode.com free polls

What Am I Missing Here?

This has surely been written about 57 million times before, but somehow it would be nice to get the message out to students about the perils of asking a professor the following question about a missed class:

Did I miss anything? or
Did I miss anything important?

How can we broadcast the information far and wide so that this question will never again be asked in this way? Is that asking for too much?

In fact, when my teenaged daughter heard her parents discussing this recently (we had both been asked this very question in this very way), she was a bit stunned, having asked a somewhat similar question of teachers in the past and intending no offense. Despite being the offspring of two parents who have infused her with secret professorial knowledge since the moment of her birth, she somehow escaped the knowledge that this question is considered offensive by sensitive professorial souls.

Her response, which is likely common to many students who ask this question sincerely, was: But sometimes my teachers don't say anything important during a class.

OK, understood. Ouch, but understood. But: if that is true, are you really going to get a useful answer out of aforementioned teacher if you ask them this question? So why not rearrange the words slightly, avoid causing offense, and maybe get some useful information?

So then we had an intense family discussion about how you should and should not ask that question. The difference between what a teacher might consider acceptable vs. not acceptable apparently seems subtle to some (students) even though others (teachers) think the distinction is obvious.

Examples:

Asking: What did I miss? = good*

Asking: Did I miss anything (important)? = bad

* Well, not really. By "good", I just mean 'not as offensive as the other statement'. This question at least assumes that something was missed. And yet, professors may not like this question because it is so open-ended. When asked this question, I tend to reply, "Did you look at the review materials that I posted after class? Did you read the relevant part of the textbook? Did you get notes from a classmate?" The answer is typically no, so then I say "I recommend that you do those things, and then I would be happy to answer any questions you may have about the material." etc. This is just part of the normal day-to-day interaction of professors and students and is OK with me.

But anyway, back to my original question, which I hope you didn't miss: Do any universities/colleges include topics in their 1st-year student orientation sessions along the lines of 'how to communicate with professors' (writing and speaking)? This might be a way to give some helpful hints about such things.

What would these hints be? I am sure most professors could quickly come up with a list of their top 3 or 5 or 10 pet-peeves that are easily avoided. I wonder: can we collectively come up with a short list, or would it actually be a very long list (perhaps with conflicting ideas about dos and don'ts) because we are all such unique individuals with our own special eccentricities and so it is essentially impossible for students to avoid offending us? I don't know, but I think we should find out. So, if you are a teacher of some sort and want to participate in this important effort:

Leave a comment with your top-n list of annoying things that students make when communicating (in speaking or writing) with you.

Then, depending on the results, I will attempt to do a poll, and then we will know something, perhaps.

Feminist in all but name

It never fails to take me aback when people say "I'm not a feminist but.." and then follow the "but" with an opinion that indicates that the person is quite likely to agree with the basic principles of feminism, in the sense of believing in political, economic, and social rights for women.
 
OK, so there are worse things than this; it is not difficult to think of many worse things than people who are feminists-in-all-but-name.

Even so, I was surprised the other day at an Administrative Meeting, when a female administrator whom I had not previously met came up to me and said:

 "The Vice-Person for Stuff told me that you are the first woman [position that I now hold in my university]. I'm not a feminist, but I think that's great. It's about time. We need more women [in that job] in the university."

She went on to say that the lack of women leaders in her unit of the university was a serious, longstanding problem. Most of the students and researchers are women, but few of the leaders are women. Every once in a while, a woman is allowed to be an interim head of something, but only until a man can be found to take over the job. She was frustrated by this, and more than a little cynical that it would change any time soon. She herself was an interim director and was certain that she would not be given the permanent position. She was sure they would replace her with a man, although she is highly qualified to keep doing this job.

Well, good thing she isn't a feminist because..

.. because why? I am having trouble finishing that sentence with anything that makes sense.

I don't even know why she chose to preface her sentence with "I'm not a feminist, but..". Why add that? If she had just said "I heard you're the first woman etc. and I think that's great", without the qualifier, what did she fear I would think? That she was a raving man-hating angry woman? That she is not automatically in favor of a woman being appointed to a position with some authority?

I did not ask her. I would very much like to help stamp out these twisted negative views of feminism/feminists, but after that strange little comment, our brief conversation focused on practical things that needed discussing in the short amount of time available.

Unfacilitated/2

This post is a continuation/follow-up on a post from last September.

Before I rip into what I consider the incompetent and corrupt practices of those who build and renovate university facilities such as, say, a Science lab, let's first spend a moment being grateful for the skilled, efficient, and polite people involved in this important work. I have not met any recently, but I believe they must exist and I am glad to think that they exist somewhere and wish that some of them had been involved in my recent project.

Now please join me in a collective scream of anger at the other ones. What boggles my naive little professorial mind is that these people work at a university and, in theory, know how a university works and know that we professors don't have endless sources of money for any particular project. Consider my situation in which I

(1) got an estimate for some work,
(2) put that estimate in a grant proposal (with a bit of a cushion to account for likely unanticipated price increases of other expenses),
(3) got the grant,
(4) got a visit from the same people who gave me the original estimate, but this time, with the project a reality, they came up with an estimate that was nearly ten (10) times the original estimate.
(5) So I begged, pleaded, sold part of my soul, and got the additional funds to pay for the new estimate, and then
(6) put in the order for the work, and then
(7) watched in horror as the actual amount was way beyond the amount of even the second estimate.

In the end, the total cost was many many many times the original estimate and significantly more than the second estimate. The work was done by the university, with one subcontract. Where does the university think I am going to get the money to pay these extra costs to the university? Why am I responsible for these inaccurate low estimates? The 'extra' costs did not involve anything unusual or unexpected. There is no reason the estimates couldn't have been more accurate, and then I could have used real numbers in my grant budget.

In fact, some of the costs were for things that were not even done, or for time that was not even spent: one item on an invoice says that something took a week but in fact it took one day, as originally planned in the quote. Somehow these imaginary costs add up to many thousands of dollars. Why should I pay these?

I have asked around about what recourse I have if I want to dispute some of these costs. I get lots of shrugs and the typical response, "Oh yes, those guys are out of control. We can't do anything about it."

Maybe I just won't pay the deficit and the university can sue itself?

I Really Wonder If You See Today Like I Do

The title of this post is from some song lyrics, in case you are wondering, and I will be semi-impressed if you know the reference without looking it up.

This song got into my head last week and refuses to leave. The instigating incident for the infliction of this song in my head was the nth in a series of similar, recent incidents that I will describe below; apparently, there was a tipping point, the consequences of which for me are these song lyrics in my head.

What happened? Not much, actually, but on several separate occasions, groups of people were sending me files. Imagine that a group of people -- say, students or colleagues serving on a committee with you -- are all sending you files by some electronic means (email attachments, uploads to a website etc.). Imagine that there are a 10 or 20 or more of these files, and you have to read them on your computer (for various reasons, you can't read them online).

Because you have to store them, at least temporarily, on your computer, it is useful if these files have distinct filenames. But some/most of these files don't have distinct filenames unless you change the filenames. Imagine getting 10 or 20 or 57 files all named "homework7.pdf" or "myreport_2012.pdf" or "proposal-text.pdf" or even "CV.pdf".

Even worse, for some of these documents, some file creators didn't even put their names in the file, assuming that you can match their file with their name in some other way. Well, you can, but only if you do it right away; after the file has been detached from its original source, you have to go back to the original source to figure this out, assuming you can do that.

In an average year, I spend more time than I would like renaming people's files.

This is possibly rather fascinating(ish). Does anyone think that filenaming habits indicate anything significant about the personality, world view, level of empathy, or something of an individual? For example, is there a deep and important difference between a person who anticipates that (for whatever reason -- your convenience and/or their own) it would be better to put their name in the filename vs. someone who gives the file the most immediately convenient name?

I don't know, but I think that anticipating that it might be more useful to use lastname_CV.pdf instead of CV.pdf does show an ability to think beyond your immediate computer environment.

I realize that in some cases we don't really know how our files will be accessed and by whom. For example, only once I was on a particular committee did I realize that files uploaded by individuals to a website were not compiled into a single pdf with the uploader's name attached to it; committee members just got the files with the original filenames, exactly as they were uploaded. It was a lot of stupid work to rename files (typically 4-8 files for each person) and create folders and keep track of everything. At the very least, I thought that if that particular organization/unit couldn't get its act together to have a decent website, they should at least give some instructions about file names, Clearly, leaving file naming to individuals was not a good idea. I am no longer on that committee, thank the committee gods.

I was thinking about this not only because I got a bunch of generic-named files recently but also because I received instructions from someone who requested that those of us in a particular group only send him email with one very specific subject heading (which he listed) and with information organized in a very particular way. This was clearly someone who had dealt with uninformative emails and files before and wasn't going to take it any more. I give similar instructions to my students when they send/upload homework files.

I sympathized, especially since I had just searched my computer for a CV that someone sent me a month or so ago.. finally found by returning to the original email, which I had saved (unusual for me).. and the file was named: CV.pdf. What was that person thinking?

Pronoun Fail

In my seemingly never-ending quest to find the best, most user-friendly, flexible, non-annoying, and free collaborative workspace in which to share ideas and data with a particular large research team, I recently set up some trial workspaces using various platforms. I didn't want to send out invitations to the entire group until I decided which, if any, we would be using, so I only added one guinea-pig colleague, just to test things out.

He was surprised when one of these sites sent him an automated e-mail with a link for joining and with some text that said (in slightly modified form):

FSP has created his own project so that he can communicate with his colleagues and friends.

I looked in the profile options to see if I could select a gender, but this is not an option. Apparently we are all, by default, men.

Yes, I wrote to the company.

Not So Fast

This post concerns a non-academic topic that has been roaming around in my brain for a while, and it is therefore disconnected from any particular time, place, climate, or topographic feature. It concerns how different my experiences are from those of other people (specifically: similarly-aged men) while participating in a particular outdoor activity.

When I participate in Outdoor Activity X (OAX) with others, I am just another person doing OAX. When I am alone, however, things are different.

Before I give some examples, I will acknowledge that of course the experience of being alone vs. being in a group/couple is different in general, not just when participating in an OAX. For example, when I am walking alone in some cities in North America and Europe, I am often stopped and asked for directions -- much more often than when I am walking with someone else. This is not surprising, but nevertheless the commonness of this phenomenon does not account the nature of some of the interactions I have when alone and doing OAX.

For example, when I am alone and participating in OAX, the following happen with enough frequency to be notable:

- A man criticizes something about what I am doing or how I am doing it. Example: Not long ago, I was told by a middle-aged man that I was going too fast. I was not. Nor I was going so slow that sarcasm was a reasonable explanation for his statement. And the fact that he barked "too fast" at me and then zoomed away makes it unlikely that he was trying to initiate a friendly conversation.

- A man does something a bit dangerous/scary in my vicinity, veering at the last second to prevent collision, in some cases laughing at how startled I am. I have no explanation for this phenomenon, but I hate it. Is it an attempt to show that they are more in control and/or more awesome than I am, or it is just for random thrills? What motivates anyone to scare another person for no (good) reason?

- If I pass a man, 92.43% of the time he will immediately speed up and pass me (if he is physically able to do so).

Incidents of the first two examples are relatively rare. The third one is common, but it amuses me rather than offends or frightens me, so that's fine.

I am writing about this because it mimics some aspects of my professional life; that is, mostly things are great/fine, but punctuated by incidents of Gender-Directed Weirdness (GDW). You can dismiss each individual incident as a Random Life Event if you want, but over time, when 100% of these incidents involve men and these incidents only occur when I am alone (and when similar events are not experienced by men I know participating in OAX), I think that GDW is a pretty likely explanation for some/most of these incidents.

Memo to the men: I could do without the comments and the scary games. And if you are passed by a woman, particularly one who is clearly not young or impressively fit, please don't feel emasculated and/or humiliated. If you immediately speed up and pass her, there is a 53.68% chance that she will be laughing at you, and not in a nice way.

(my apologies for continued sporadic posting/comment moderation as I spend time in various intense research activities and travel for at least another week.)

Unfacilitated

Can I just take a moment here and say that I hate how the "facilities" units of (some) universities gouge other units of the university, particularly when those other units are faculty with limited resources?

Can I express my frustration with how (some) "facilities" units do not in fact facilitate much, but instead suck up a lot of money?

Can I also note that my dealings with "facilities" people would perhaps be a bit easier if they would communicate with me directly? They instead prefer to deal with a senior professor who has absolutely nothing to do with my project but with whom they feel "comfortable". He keeps forwarding their e-mails to me and telling them that he has nothing to do with this project and that I am in fact the PI/director of the project and they should communicate with me. And then they e-mail him again with the next bit of information. I have finally eeked my way onto the cc list, so maybe we are making some progress.

I have previously requested shared wallowing about this exact issue, but it may be time to do that again. Feel free to share your stories.

I am on board with the concept of people being paid a high wage for skilled technical work (electrical, plumbing, construction etc.), but I do not think that it should cost many many many thousands of dollars to do basic things, some of which I could do myself (for free!).

And it should not cost many many many thousands of dollars for "facilities" to study a situation before calculating how many many many many more thousands of dollars the actual work will cost.

That's all I have to say on this Friday. And I promise that I will wait a little bit before sending in the manuscript review I just completed until I am sure that my facilities-focused anger does not seep into my review comments and have unfair negative consequences for the authors, who have nothing to do with the "facilities" people on my campus, although I will note that it is not a good paper, in part because the native English-speaking co-author did not read this paper (or, if he did, he did not care enough to do the considerable work necessary to make the paper understandable and instead assumed/hoped that reviewers and editors would do all that).

[/end rant]

Dependent

From time to time, my husband and I have been been invited to be Visiting Professors (or Guest Professors or Visiting Scholars or various titles like that) at other institutions, for a sabbatical or for a shorter visit. Such invitations are always nice, of course, and we are fortunate to have some flexibility in how/when we arrange these visits. We are also fortunate to have a portable, adventurous daughter who is happy to visit new and distant places, as long as we eventually return to our home and our cats.

Some host institutions have money to pay visitors, some have funds to subsidize part of a visit, and some just have a stimulating environment (and a desk or two) to offer. If we have enough time to plan, we can usually raise (from grants and other awards) most or all of the money we need to offset the salary we are not getting from our home institution while we are away on a research leave. Particularly when visiting an extremely expensive (for us) place, however, it is great if there is at least subsidized visitor housing.

Some things you cannot plan for, though. Examples include MAJOR NATURAL DISASTERS (well, you can sort of plan, but you can't predict them) and MAJOR DECREASE IN THE VALUE OF THE DOLLAR (well, maybe you can also sort of plan for that, but not really).

Something else that I am never quite prepared for is how I am treated -- in an administrative way -- as a person who is both a visiting professor and the wife of another visiting professor. The first time we visited another institution as guest professors, I kept being surprised at how I was treated in some settings as an independent person and in others as a "dependent" -- that is, as someone not permitted to sign her own forms or make independent decisions in particular settings. I had never before had to sign forms on a special (lower) line labeled "Wife" before.

And now it's happening again, sort of. Although my husband and I are both invited to be visiting scholars with separate invitations to visit different research groups at a particular institution, I was recently surprised to find that I am listed as a "dependent" on an official university form. I only found this out when I was doing some paperwork, and this paperwork bounced back because I was not authorized to submit it on my own. Only my husband can submit this form on my behalf.

At least in this case, there is the possibility that one spouse (either one) is the primary person and the other is the dependent, so in theory I could be the primary filler-outer-of-paperwork, but we weren't asked what we preferred. The university decided that husband = primary.

Perhaps they are trying to save us all some paperwork by only processing one "family" form instead of separate forms for each of us. If these administrators knew us, however, they would put the more organized person as the "primary" applicant, and the person who hates all paperwork and who puts off any sort of administrative task as long as possible as the "dependent". But they didn't do that.

OK, so they don't know us, but it would have been nice if they had asked: which of you should be the primary form-filler-outer and which the so-called dependent? We make decisions like this all the time when there is a requirement that something be primarily in one name, with the other a co-signer. Sometimes I am the primary person and sometimes my husband is. For each situation, we discuss it and make a decision. But, as I said, we were not given this option in this case.

This is just an administrative detail, and unlikely to be an indicator of how I will be treated on a daily basis as a visiting scholar. I am sure that when I am interacting with my host research group, I will be treated as Me and not Mrs. Me. It's only when I have had to interact with government agencies and university administrative units that I have had to assume the role of Dependent. Designating this doesn't make it so, it just makes me annoyed that I can't be responsible for some (important) details of my own visit and appointment.

I hope that, someday, more of officialdom will recognize that some families have financially and otherwise equal members, and provide options for non-dependent (in a financial sense) partners to have equal responsibility for dealing with the wonderful world of bureaucracy.

An Open Letter to the Math Guy

Following on a recent post about annoying ancillary things we wouldn't miss while on sabbatical, I propose that today we each think about the most trivial annoying thing that routinely afflicts our working lives. Something so small that we might not think it is worth trying to fix. We might even be embarrassed to mention it to anyone but a very close friend or the blogosphere. It might not even make our list of Small Things We Would Not Miss while on sabbatical. And yet, if this annoying small thing went away, life would be better.

Then it would be good to think of a way to eliminate this little annoyance. Maybe we can't solve the tera-problems, but maybe we can eliminate a nano-problem or two. This is what I recently tried to do with a nano-problem.

There was one small thing that was annoying me every single week before a certain class. Instead of dealing with the problem right away, I wrote the following letter in my head each week for many weeks, but never sent it. Eventually, when an opportunity finally arose, I talked to the intended recipient of the letter in person and temporarily fixed the problem that way. Life was definitely nano-better when the nano-problem was temporarily solved, but now I'm back to square one, so I was thinking about these types of little annoyances again today.

Here is the letter I wrote in my head:

Dear Math Guy,

We teach in the same classroom on the same days. There are no other classes in that room between your class and my class, and that is how I know that YOU are responsible for leaving the boards covered (covered!) from top to bottom, left to right, with Math Writing.

The problem (for me) is that you don't erase what you write. Ever. Who do you think erases the board of your equations and annotations? You may not know or care, but I will tell you anyway: I erase the board of your writing. I erase the board at the beginning of my class because I have no choice if I want to write on the board during my class as well.

Oh sure, the students would probably love it if I did not erase the board and instead just projected a series of text slides that they could copy into their notes -- who doesn't love a class consisting entirely of text slides? And if they were bored, they could look at your Math Writing. I could show text slides, but every once in a while, I like to mix it up a bit and write and sketch things out.

Clearly you like to do the same thing when you teach. Maybe we have a lot in common in our approach to teaching. Maybe we would even like each other if we met in person. But we have not met yet, and therefore, at the beginning of every class, I loathe you for a few minutes in absentia.

Perhaps you think I am unreasonable for being annoyed, and that instructors should just be prepared to erase the board at the beginning of class. What's the big deal anyway? Well, for one thing, we have the awesome luck to teach in one of the few classrooms that still has a chalkboard and chalk. Perhaps I wouldn't be so annoyed if it were just a matter of erasing dry-erase marker on a white board. Instead, I end up sneezing and covered in chalk dust at the beginning of my class rather than at the end, and I find that unpleasant.

You may be surprised to know how much you are annoying the person who teaches in that classroom after you. I am sure you don't even think about the effect your non-erasing habit has on the next instructor. You finish your class and you leave, exhilarated or depressed, and probably quite tired after all of that writing and talking.

Even so, I am writing to ask you to take a few minutes to erase the board of your own writing before you exit the classroom. And then I will no longer loathe you for those few minutes each week, and that will surely be a relief to us both.

Thanks in advance for erasing,

FSP


During the brief time when this nano-problem seemed to be solved, I was in a much better mood when I started my class. I could start the class with the key points I wanted to make at the beginning, rather than spending the first few minutes with my back to the class while I erased the board and got covered in chalk dust. Life was definitely better.

Now Math Guy has returned to his evil ways, and I am back to writing this letter in my head (and in this post) until I get a chance to talk to him again. Either that, or the academic year will just end, as it surely must eventually, I will quickly forget about being annoyed about such a small but pernicious thing.

Kick Me

What a week.

This week, I participated in a meeting of a working group with which I have been associated for the past 6 years or so. I have devoted a lot of time to this particular service activity, and overall I have enjoyed the work. It can be frustrating when there are lots of deadlines all at once, but mostly I feel good about making a contribution in this particular way.

I am the only woman involved in this working group of Science Professors, and I have known all along that I was asked to join the group in part because I am female. This was (and is) fine with me because I think it is important that there be a woman in this group and because I am highly qualified for the work. It's not as if I am getting a *special award* for being a woman; I am contributing my time and efforts to a service activity, and I think what I am doing is important and worthwhile. The diversity issue is a positive aspect of this work, not something to be ashamed of.

So anyway, The Guys and I got together one day this week. We don't get together as a group all that often, but we had some things to discuss that were more efficient to deal with in a meeting than through endless e-mails or a conference call.

TWICE during the first half hour of the meeting, somewhat out of context, and completely gratuitously, one of The Guys mentioned that I was only part of this group because "they had to have a woman". He hastened to say that he was totally on board with this because he recognized the realities of the world today. Diversity has been deemed to be important -- although he noted that he has seen no evidence of the discrimination that some women in our field claim to experience -- so our group should be diverse.

He's a jerk, but I've been working well in this group for too long to feel humiliated.

I don't know what the younger man added to the working group in recent years (i.e., after me) thought of all this. Did it previously occur to him that I was a Diversity Addition to the group? Does he believe that he (unlike me) was invited to join us owing to his awesome skills? Do I really want to know the answer to that question? Should I re-read my own post from yesterday?

What did I do when my esteemed colleague made his "FSP is a token" comments? I calmly changed the subject to one more relevant to the meeting, made a point that no one else had thought of, got complimented (by someone else) for having noticed something that had long been overlooked by other members of the group, and basically just moved on with the tasks at hand. I am a useful member of this committee, and I will continue to contribute for as long as it is worthwhile for me to do so.

And yet, I did briefly wish that I could do something a bit more dramatic. I don't mean that I wanted to yell or slash my colleague's leather jacket, but something a bit symbolic might have conveyed my dismay at still being considered a Token after all these years of working with this group.

For example, what if I had a special Token Hat with pink ribbons and flowers? I could bring it with me and keep it in my briefcase purse until I needed it. Then, when the occasion arose, I could put my hat on and go sit quietly in the corner, except when one of the guys said something they thought was brilliant, and then I could sigh and say "Oh Bob, you are so smart". And when one of them made a little joke -- like when Professor Not-A-Token made a joke about all the lame people who read and write blogs, which he never reads (good!) -- I could be sure to laugh in an appreciative and admiring way.

But mostly of course I would be very quiet. That way, I could be in the group, the group could get its diversity creds, but the guys wouldn't actually have to listen to me. Wouldn't that be better?

Overheard in Science

It seems that I have been eavesdropping a lot lately, but here is something I heard today:

"All the speakers were male, so there was no possibility of anyone having been included just for diversity reasons."

That's so good to know. I hate it when there are token women in a session and you have to wonder what they are doing there because there is the added complexity of having to figure out if they were invited because they have interesting things to say or whether the session had to include at least one woman. Everything is much more straightforward when it's just a bunch of deserving guys who were invited because they are all brilliant and articulate.

Don't Ask Me

A colleague and I typically teach each other's classes 1-3 times each term when the other is traveling. Although it can be strange to drop into someone's class for a lecture or three, it can also be fun. Sometimes.

During my last substitution experience, it was just my luck that I also had to return an exam. The graduate student who was originally assigned to be a grader and assistant for this large class had been fired from that position recently, so I was on my own. I decided to return the exams at the end of class, stopping my lecture a bit early to allow time for the chaos of returning exams to a large class. Before returning the exams, I told the students to talk to Professor X if they had any questions about their exams. In fact, Professor X had told them in the previous class that they should direct all question to him, the professor of the class, and not to me, the substitute who was just filling in for the next class.

When the exams were handed back, one student approached me, exam in hand.

Student: I have a question about how I was graded on question #9.

Me: You will have to ask Professor X about that.

Student: But I just want to know why I lost points on question #9.

Me: You will have to ask Professor X about that. I haven't even looked at the exam.

Student: But I just have this one question.

Me: You will have to ask Professor X your question. I did not grade the exam. I have not looked at the exam. I cannot answer your question.

Student: But my question is about [TOPIC], which I wrote about in question #9.

Me: You will have to ask Professor X about that.

Student: I just want to know about this question (starts reading aloud his answer to question #9).

Me: What part of "You will have to ask Professor X" don't you understand?

OK, I did not really say that. Let me try again.

Me: Maybe if you were a better listener, you wouldn't have gotten such a low grade on the exam.

No, I didn't say that either. I was, however, reminded of a time, years ago, when I used to dog-sit for a friend of mine. When she and her family were out of town for short trips, I would stay overnight at her house and take care of her dogs. My cats, who had to spend the night at our house without me, were very mature about this, and I enjoyed having some dog-time.

One of the dogs was very young and energetic. I spent a lot of time playing fetch with this dog, and she was always disappointed when I stopped throwing her favorite ball; she never wanted to stop. One day, I decided that I was going to play fetch until the dog got tired of it. I wanted to find her limit; I was going to wear that dog out if it took all night. We played fetch for more than 4 hours without stopping, and then I gave up. She was sad when we stopped, and kept dropping the ball at my feet and looking at me beseechingly. Wouldn't I just throw it a few or a thousand more times?

I was reminded of this because, when this student kept repeating his question, I decided to wear him down. I wanted to make him give up asking me this same question over and over. And I was curious: How many times could he ask this question, despite my repeated insistence that I was not going to answer his question? Who would give in first?

Pop quiz!

The correct answers to the questions above are:

a. 11 times, FSP gave in first
b. 11 times, student gave in first
c. Why are you so competitive with puppies and students?
d. Why do you hate men and dogs so much?

This student was extremely annoying and seemed to lack certain listening/comprehension skills, but perhaps his persistence will be useful to him in some career?

Invisible Me

Not long ago, a Great Man of Science came to my department, gave some talks, and met with faculty, students, and researchers. I have met him before, most recently ~ 6 months ago, but we do not know each other well at all.

I expected him to be familiar with only one part of my research; i.e., research on topic X, as it was in the context of my work on X that we most recently met. Therefore, during my individual meeting with him in my office, I was amazed to hear him say:

My good friend, Other Great Man of Science, is doing some really interesting work on X right now. In fact, he is transforming the way we think about X, and has some recent results that are very exciting.

I was stunned when he said this, and sought clarification. I thought maybe I heard him wrong or somehow misunderstood.

I was stunned because he was talking about my research group's work on X.

The interesting ideas and results have not been generated by my collaborator, Other Great Man of Science, who is at another university. In fact, the exciting results are primarily the work of one of my recent PhD students, as part of her doctoral thesis work.

Other Great Man of Science was a collaborator on the NSF grant that funded this work, but he has not been the most active member of the group and has not been a driving force behind the research. In fact, although I enjoy working with Other Great Man, his part of the project has been lagging.

My PhD student (now graduated) has been the most visible person doing this research and making the interesting discoveries and interpretations. Great Man also met her 6 months ago and saw her present her research results, at length. Yet Great Man erased her from his perception of the collaboration as well. In his mind, the only person worth remembering or mentioning is Other Great Man of Science.

It was surreal to have my group's research described to me by someone else and attributed to a colleague, as if my student and I did not exist.

My ego, which is generally healthy but not too huge on most days, was wounded, but not mortally so, as I am dealing with the situation by wallowing in outrage and contempt for this particular Great Man of Science (as a person, not as a scientist).

I hasten to say that Other Great Man of Science is not responsible for this situation. He has not taken undue credit for the research. In fact, he has been very supportive of my student and would be the first to confirm that it is primarily her work and that she has made the most interesting discoveries of the work thus far.

It is Great Man of Science's perception of the research that is the problem. He sees his famous friend; the rest of us either don't exist or can't possibly be important. Given the incredible amount of name-dropping he did during his talks in my department, this may be a habit with him.

If you had been in my place when this Great Man gave credit to his famous friend for the ideas and work of one of your students and/or you, despite the fact that you and your student had published and given talks on the research (and Other Great Man had not) and you knew that Great Man had been present at those talks (and had asked questions at the time), what would you have done? Confronted him immediately? Let it slide because who cares what he thinks -- he won't change his ideas and why cause an embarrassing situation, assuming the Great Man of Science is capable of being embarrassed? Expressed anger? Used humor? Nodded silently? Wondered if he was losing his mind?

Later I shall reveal what I did, but for now this post is a cliff-hanger.

Finger on the Button

The administrative staff members at a university's Sponsored Research Office (SRO) are the ones who actually submit proposals on behalf of the university and individual PIs. They push the button that sends the proposal to the funding agency.

When preparing an NSF proposal using FastLane, PIs have the following options in terms of giving "access control" to their Sponsored Research Office:

• permission to view the proposal but not submit it (yet)
• permission to view and edit but not submit (yet)
• permission to view, edit, and submit

Of course the most efficient option for PIs is to go straight to the third option, so that the SRO can view, then submit, the proposal as soon as the proposal is ready. This option, however, is preferred only if you have a very competent and communicative SRO staff person working with you. Fortunately, that is the majority of SRO administrators I have encountered, but there have been some notable exceptions.

The view-edit-submit option makes me uncomfortable at the early to intermediate stages of proposal preparation because:

- The proposal might look like it is complete, yet not be in a form that I want submitted to the NSF. PIs are supposed to upload a project description and project summary by a specified internal deadline, a day or 5 before the funding agency deadline, so that the SRO can check the budget, budget justification, font types, font sizes, margins etc. In some (most?) cases, however, the proposal isn't submission-ready by the time of the internal deadline. There might be a support letter missing, for example. The proposal is ready enough for viewing and checking, but not for submitting.

Flexible and nice SRO staff are willing to examine a not-quite-final version of the proposal, as long as the parts they need to see are available, then submit the proposal when everything is assembled, up to and including the day of the proposal deadline. With these particular SRO staff people, I am willing to click the view-edit-submit button at an early stage. But:

A few years ago, I had uploaded some, but not all, components of a proposal before I left for a research-related trip abroad. I had finished and uploaded the budget and other required forms, but the internal deadline was still a week away, and I planned to work more on the project description, summary, and references while traveling. This was >5 years ago, and I was traveling in a part of the world that, at the time, did not have ubiquitous internet access.

After a few days, I went to an internet cafe filled with young men playing violent computer games. In my e-mail inbox I saw something far more terrifying than the virtual explosions and shootings on the monitors around me. I saw an automatically generated e-mail confirming the submission of my proposal. The SRO had submitted my incomplete proposal to the NSF.

In fact, this should not have happened at all because the proposal was so incomplete. The internal deadline had not even passed. Why did the SRO submit the proposal? I called my university in a panic. The SRO staff member who was handling my proposal had submitted it just before leaving on vacation.

I had to withdraw the proposal and reconstruct all the documents, some of which I had foolishly not brought with me because they had been completed and approved before I left. I learned that if you withdraw a proposal, you cannot recover the files on FastLane, and so I had to build the budget all over again with the help of a heroic department accountant (now retired, alas) and co-PI.

That experience traumatized me, and although that SRO staff member did not last much longer in her job, it took me a long time to bring myself to select view-edit-submit as an early option for SRO access. Lately, I have gone back to selecting this option when I know that a particular very competent SRO staff person is handling my proposal.

Just before a recent proposal submission, I learned that this particular person would be out of town during the relevant time frame for proposal submission. I gave the SRO permission to view, but not submit the proposal.

For some reason, my proposal therefore came to the attention of the competent person's superior at the SRO; someone with a long administrative title and no doubt awesome administrative responsibilities.

He sent me a very snippy e-mail saying that because I had not given his office access to submit the proposal early enough, he was going to delay submission of my proposal. He said that, furthermore, because my proposal appeared to have a target date rather than an actual deadline, he saw no reason why I should insist on the proposal's being submitted by a certain date.

By the time he sent that e-mail, his office had access to submit my proposal, in plenty of time before the deadline; I just hadn't selected this option right way. In addition, if he had looked at the cover page and saw what type of proposal it was and/or had looked at an internal document that clarified the issue of the deadline, he would know that I wasn't just being an imperious jerk who selected a random date for a deadline and expected everyone to work according to my schedule. The NSF program director had specified an optimal date, which was now going to be missed owing to the SRO administrator's little hissy fit.

SRO guy also questioned something in my budget -- specifically, an issue related to whether I could justify the amount of student support I was requesting relative to the proposed research.

What?? How does he know how much time it takes to do a particular type of research?

The budget had already been approved by the accounting office, my department chair, and my college's dean. The budget item in question was justified in the proposal -- in the project description and budget justification. The last thing I need is an administrator wondering whether I am asking for too much money for graduate students relative to the amount of work they will be doing. That typically is not a problem.

The overall theme of SRO guy's e-mail was that because I had offended and inconvenienced his office by not giving them immediate access to submit the proposal when I first initiated proposal preparation in FastLane, he was going to punish me in various annoying little ways. He cc'd his e-mail to the dean and my chair and someone else I didn't know.

He did not cc the co-PI, but I did. The co-PI thinks my reply was perhaps even a bit too nice. I did not mention my earlier emotional trauma regarding premature submission of a proposal, but instead just dealt with his points, one by one. My purpose was to appear calm, reasonable, and polite, and to get this proposal submitted as soon as possible.

Now I have two things to worry about:

1 - If I select view-edit-submit right away, my proposal might be submitted prematurely, causing major problems and inconvenience for all concerned. I know this is unlikely to happen again, but unless I know that a trusted SRO staff member is handling my proposal, I feel anxious about it.

2 - If I select view-edit but not submit first, I might offend this snowflake administrator whose feelings are easily hurt and who then punishes me by delaying submission of my proposal and raising spurious questions about the details of the proposal.

Ideally, faculty and administrators work together to optimize proposal submissions. The process involves effort and communication on both parts. Faculty need to follow internal procedures and meet internal deadlines for submitting proposals, but if we do that, we shouldn't have to worry about the delicate feelings of the administrators who have the ultimate power to push the button and submit (or not) our proposals to the funding agencies.

No Use

Apparently, if we write in the budget justification of a proposal that we will use the funds to buy a computer, that is not acceptable to some of the budget overlords. Use is an ambiguous and unsatisfactory word to justify purchase of potentially unethical devices like computers because, although a computer could be used for research purposes specific to the grant that would purchase the hypothetical computer, it could also be used to do nefarious things like writing a paper for a different research project, reading e-mail from undergraduate students, writing a new proposal, or blogging about how vexed one is by accountants.

The upshot: If the budget justification somehow slips through and gets to NSF and the proposal turns into a grant, I would not be allowed to purchase the computer requested in the budget because the computer is a "non-special item" and is insufficiently justified.

BUT:

If we write in our budget justification that we need the funds to buy a computer, we might be allowed to skip on over to the Apple store or website to purchase a shiny new computer. Or so they say. The accountant told me that he can't guarantee that I'd be allowed to buy the computer, but that it would be more likely if I wrote need instead of use.

Perhaps by the time the proposal is funded, if it is ever funded, the accounting rules will have changed and need will no longer be sufficient. Perhaps I will be told that I should have written that I really need the computer or that I have urgent grant-specific needs that can only be satisfied by a particular computer that I know from my 57 hours of ethics training must only be used for the specific research project related to the grant that purchased the computer. And I will have to sign in blood, or at least digital blood.

Recent experience has shown me that it is not possible to be too paranoid or cynical when it comes to dealing with the university accounting system.