Sunday, September 24, 2006

Reinventing A Very Stupid Wheel

Someone should come up with a Geneva Conventions-type document for faculty. Somewhere in there should be a mention that faculty meetings, including *retreats* that last more than 6-7 hours, are cruel and illegal. There should, however, be a specified set of punishments reserved for people who enjoy these events so much that they make them last even longer by talking about non-essential things, like themselves.

With what little lucidity that remains to me until I recover from my ordeal, I will say that my considered opinion is that I just wasted a huge amount of time going to this thing. We talked AT LENGTH about the same old stuff, came to the same old conclusions that we need to talk more about these things, and nothing was accomplished.

And what is more, almost the first thing out of the meeting's discussion leader was an incorrect statement attributing one of my accomplishments to one of my senior (male) colleagues. It was very classic. I wish I'd been sitting there with a copy of "Beyond Bias and Barriers". I could have said "Um, excuse me, but what you just said is covered on page x in Chapter 3. Shall I read this to you?" and then everyone would gasp as they recognized their unintentional discriminatory behaviors and they would all vow to change and it would be amazing. As I said, I am not lucid right now.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

that sounds annoying! Did you or someone else correct the wrong attribution? The image of calling people out and citing the relevant passages made me laugh out loud, but, sadly, maybe we really need to do that.

Anonymous said...

To address Meijusa, but it happens All The Time. And you just get tired of 'calling it out'. And you start to sound annoying, or catty, or 'sensitive'. It just is a complete Catch-22 and sometimes you sit and fume and sometimes you say something and neither time does either option make you feel better.

Anonymous said...

Carrie, the person who should call it out in this case it the one who was wrongly credited with the achievement, IMHO. Yes, the decision to call it out is a judgement call every time, precisely due to those traps you mention, you put the finger on it. I so know what you mean, and I wish I didn't. Using humor when calling it out sometimes helps me to get around the traps, but that's not enough. I feel relieved on the very few occasions when someone else does the calling out, maybe I should put more effort into recruiting allies.

Ms.PhD said...

Someone else should have said something.

Along those lines, I am sick of this one particular meeting I have to go to where I am NEVER credited with having a clue, and have no allies. I don't know what to do. Stop going? Try to schmooze with people away from the group and get them on my side? It's miserable.