Speaking in academic settings

Roughly, this was what my PhD dissertation was about - speaking. The specifics:

(1) in an astronomy department,

(2) in academic events (not talks for the public),

(3) in events where a grad student could potentially speak (by giving a talk, presenting an idea, or asking a question),

(4) as reported by graduate students and faculty members, when I interviewed them about speaking events.

It was a qualitative study, which means I asked, listened, recorded, transcribed, read and analyzed a whole lot of words. Over and over, as far as reading and analyzing goes.

I started the whole study thinking it would be about gender issues in astronomy, and inspired by a single question, asked in a women's group meeting in an astronomy department.

Q: "Why it is so hard for me to ask a question?"

Soon, my focus shifted to anyone (not just women) asking questions, then speaking in general, to other academics. My way-too-simple answer to above question?

A: "Because it is a hard (complicated) task to ask the right question. Or say the right thing. Or present in the right way."

It is hard for the woman who asked that question, because it is complex. Not because she is defective. It is complex for a number of reasons.

First, because of the ambiguity of vocabulary - asking a question can mean either having a question (as in "I don't get what you just said"), or coming up with a question (a multi-step process that requires a lot of practice and knowledge of the audience as well as the speaker). Everybody who sits in an academic talk audience has questions. Things they didn't understand or see or remember. Having questions is easy. A piece of cake.

Coming up with a question, the kind that takes into account what other members of the audience might also find interesting (be they graduate students who were unlikely to get some subtle point made by a speaking in your field that you wish to clarify politely, by asking a leading question, or other faculty), that maintains or raises your intellectual status within that group or in the speaker's eye (meaning it doesn't reveal you as not knowing something that others think you should, and hopefully shows you to know things others don't), and makes sure the speaker feels good about their talk in the case that no one else is asking a question.....well, I think you get the point. It is complex. There are many variables to take into account. And for an inexperienced person (i.e. graduate student), it is hard enough to learn about the existence, much less the subtle balance, of all these variables.

As with children and parents, graduate students learn academic culture from professors. So they try to imitate them, see what they do and don't approve of, listen carefully to what they make fun of or laud. And as with family, the saying "do as I say, not as I do" falls just as flat in the training and mentoring of graduate students. A professor can say "There's no such thing as a stupid question" until she is blue in the face, but if she also tries to hide her ignorance, and never asks "I didn't get ____ on your slide" questions, it won't help. If a professor calls other researches dumb, or idiots, or makes fun of any type of lack of knowledge, students learn that exposing what they don't know, by means of asking a question, is dangerous. That there is always the risk of asking a question that shows you didn't know something (ironically, how questions are designed), and since not knowing everything is looked down upon in academia, it makes you look stupid.

I have a big problem with this notion of stupid. And more generally of what seems like a very antiquated (and contrary to learning theory) concept of intelligence. In some ways, science academics have a pre-education-101 view of intelligence, as innate, as fixed, as static, as being about remembering everything, about knowing a lot of things, as measurable by what you say or ask, as responsible for professional success (and as evidenced by it). The biggest insult you can deliver in science is to question someone's intelligence. Not how they are dressed, not on their social skills, not how much money they make, not what their ethnic background is, not what they look like. Call someone lazy, but just don't close the door on any possibility of self-redemption by deciding they are stupid. A revered scientist can be disheveled, rude, mean, socially awkward, smelly, wearing month old clothes, barely understandable. But no revered scientist is stupid.

"You're no Einstein."

(To be continued....)