The beast within

Turns out that turning on the air conditioner (yet another concession to increasing age and decreasing ability to sleep off a rough night well into the morning) was the way to sleep in Istanbul. It continued to be a gorgeous city, although never that well suited to travel with a toddler in the near 90 F sunny days. Not enough playgrounds nearby. And I think M was more than a bit worried in a big, new city, and wound up trying to constantly establish a 6 ft circumference safety circle around A. Good luck with that in a city where even the mosque guards can be found cooing to a baby, giving him their walkie talkies to chew and slam on the carpets, and later young women take the same baby for a walk always within sight of his parents. The people were so lovely and kind, and loooooooove children. Their own, yours, that one over there, all of them. There was not much personal space for A to inhabit when everyone wanted to pinch her cheeks. She declared in the middle of the trip "I no like Esstanbul," which I'm sure was not referring to all the gelato she ate, the birds she chased or the food she happily gobbled up. M and A and Aunt P had a tour guide show them around for a few days while I was at the conference.

I finally hit my stride at said academic gathering. My poster was moderately attended, I chatted with a handful of attendees, at coffee breaks and lunches, I hung out with the Brazilians. It was okay. I had time to think about my own research and where to take it from here, and went a few steps forward during the meeting, listening to the various English-as-a-second-language speakers' presentations. Know what? In a meeting like that, where even the native English speakers are working hard to keep up with the galloping change in accents that roam the span of each session, more text on slides is a good thing. As is reading directly from a slide. I'm a convert of the extreme context specificity of the "little text; no direct reading" rule.

Once I got home, work is again slow, and so I feel the same. And in an ill-advised google search of Candida Diet (something I might at some point need to consider, due to a combination of the d&c after the miscarriage and probably the cortisone shots), I am once again reminded of why "we don't do google searches on medical problems", children. Ugh. Look it up - you can eat beef, eggs, macadamia nuts, and peppermint tea. Oh, and eventually work your way up to yogurt. It is depressing, but not as creepy as all the folks discussing it on the forums (children, if you didn't obey, and actually did the google search, for the love of Pete at least don't read the forums...). They are busy writing things about the Candida Die-Off in which the candida is described as being angry at you, who are not offering sugar on its altar of gut and other parts destruction and attacks you. And you feel like crap.

So guess who tried a mini-version of no caffeine (coffee beans and tea leaves are moldy, apparently), sugar or carbs today? Someone with a death wish who really should have known better, but thankfully had daycare for both child and dog at midday. And then drank black tea finally. And then had a pizza and ibuprofen for dinner in hopes that the sudden flu symptoms (huge headache, aches, nausea, and I kid you not, even leg pain from my back) would go away. They did. I'm chalking it up to either caffeine/sugar withdrawl, or the ability of ibuprofen to handle flu symptoms. And pretending I didn't read anything about angry microbes.

In either case, I will most likely be offering white bread and jam and coffee to "the beast" tomorrow for breakfast. M replied to my texts about how horrible this felt by telling me to "feed my Trill." Nerd.

Entitled to understand

Ok, today this is officially a space for me to think through this workshop. I need some questions to ask my audience, to get us all thinking about these topics.

In interview data gathering, it is always a better idea to ask open-ended, or at least not Yes/No questions. I'm guessing the same applies for a good question to ask a group that you want to get talking. And let's try them out on whoever is reading this right now and can leave a comment:

(1) Name an event or setting in your field where you rarely or never talk/ask questions.

(2) Name an event or setting in which you do ask questions or talk.

Hmm. I've already re-structured both of those questions a few times. This is good practice to figure out exactly what my point is.

(3) Name an event or setting outside of work/school where you are very comfortable talking or asking questions.

So what is my point with these questions? First go leave a comment with your answer for the three, if you please would.

I'm guessing that for the first question, there will be a lot of standard, departmental and conference settings. Which is the problem - there is something in the structure of these events that hinders easy and comfortable participation. This is a good time to add that, in my study, I assume that for the most part, the people attending these events in departments (morning coffees, journal clubs, colloquia) are well meaning. The faculty (at least in my interviews) say they want students to speak up more, and the students say they want to speak up more. And personally, in counselling, I've found this assumption to get me a lot further towards being happy and having healthier relationships, than assuming that someone is evil or trying to make my life hell on purpose. People have their own shit and that shit sometimes hits us in the face on accident, as they are spinning wildly, dealing with their own issues. Like that secretary I probably freaked out a few posts ago. Assuming she was scared instead of evil means I get to drop the issue and stop dwelling on her dark mark on this Earth.

Anyway, I assume everyone is well-intentioned, and that they all do want students to speak up more. Then I'm free to see what is standing in the way. Because there are other events, maybe a great mentor's office hours, or with friends in a study group, where students are speaking about science. And in the absence of even these few patches of hope (for me, there was a GR professor's office hours and studying with my friend A), there is hopefully at least one place in life where each person feels comfortable speaking. With a best friend or spouse, a parent, a stranger on a flight, a child.

I wonder if I should ask for them to list many events where they are uncomfortable speaking, and comfortable speaking? To make discussion more lively? Ooh, I know. Let's start really fun - tell me about the worst event you've ever seen/attended for speaking up.

These are the kinds of stories, part gossip and horror, that can help highlight the extreme version of unhelpful structures. Like the secret journal club, held without a group leader's knowledge, because the official event was so horribly demeaning.

Not only is gossip good to get the discussion flowing, turns out gossip and ridicule are key cultural norm delineators and enforces. What someone makes fun of about another person's behavior (if it is a joke that the group approves of, laughs at) communicates what that group holds to be a breach of proper conduct.

So, I'll start with some version of these 3 questions, have people write them down, we'll list them on a board or overhead, and then I'll talk a bit about research on speaking in academic settings, and we'll finish up by looking at the structures of the speaking-friendly events and see if we can't redesign some of the unfriendly events with that info. For instance, saving intellectual face is an important part of academic speaking, so instead of telling students there is no such thing as a stupid question, you might see how much they are worried about this issue by giving out index cards for people to write their questions on anonymously at a colloquium, and then collecting and asking a few of the speaker. Because we have all probably had a question, been worried it was too stupid to ask, and then seen a more senior member of the audience ask it.

Let me give an example of a place I've felt comfortable speaking up - a dance performance troupe practice. A group of us are going up in front of an audience, and we all need to, want to, look good. If you don't ask your questions, you're not going to get things right. There is a product you are aiming to produce and you'd rather be seen as not knowing something in practice than on stage. People feel entitled to understand in that kind of setting.

Entitled to understand. Crazy notion if you apply it to graduate students in a colloquium audience, eh? This is another aspect of a culture, whether it holds the speaker or the listener as responsible for the listener's understanding. A subset of this is in humor - is the joke teller or the joke hearer responsible for "getting" the joke? This will influence how subtle or explicit a joke is in a given culture. So back to the academic setting, a group of people leave the room after a talk, many of them having not understood most of the talk. Whose fault is this? The answer is somewhat determined by the culture's stance - should the speaker have done a better job explaining or should the listeners have tried harder and known more in order to understand better?