Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Following my participating in the yearly or semi-annual "data protection" training module, I got the idea to write a post about "one size fits all" thinking that seems to be all too common in academia. Here are four examples:
* Every year, faculty at Georgia Tech -- and every other school -- are required to take certain "mini-courses" or training modules on things like ethics and data protection. I'll not say why these are required, but I think you can guess (there are some legitimate reasons, and others are more cynical). Anyways, one problem with these is that about 90% of the material doesn't apply to me. That's because they make the modules to serve every department, and every type of person; but I'm in a specific department (math), and I'm not the "typical" person. For example, they may go into a lengthy discussion about the care of "human and animal subjects" in experiments; but becuase I don't do biomedical research, these are not relevant to me. Another example: maybe they show nice, friendly colleagues and students who come to me with a "personal concern", about a student's relationship issues or something. The goal is to train you to play psychologist, or how to handle a situation like that. It's so strange seeing that, as it's nothing like what a math deparment looks like (which is filled with "chillier" people than those warm-and-fuzzy guys in the videos); and a student would know better than to solicit advice like that from me. (In a similar vein, I get random emails from all over the campus, to participate in some event or service work, that pre-supposes that the people receiving it are "normal" -- e.g. they have families -- "bring your family to the yearly Ramblin Wreck Pot Luck!", or something like that -- or are telegenic, extroverted leader-types.)
* There are lots of strange rules and hoops on the books that students in math have to jump through that are just not relevant to us. One of these is the need to obtian an "external committee member" during the ph.d. thesis defense. I can see that something like this might be relevant in medicine, say, where there are differing opinions about what the data mean; and, in a medical research department, group-think can set in, so you want someone there with an outsider's perspective. But in math, rarely do people question the correctness of the research; it can always be checked by simply reading the paper and working through the logic, unlike in other fields where claims are more tentative -- and often are later proved "incomplete" or wrong. Hence, it's kind of silly to require that math ph.d. students have an external committee member like that.
* There are lots of small accounting issues that keep coming up that really annoy me. Here is one small example: before leaving campus to attend a conference, say, you have to sign a Travel Authority. Let's suppose that where you are traveling to has already paid your way. When you go to fill out the Travel Authority paperwork, they ask what grant you want to charge the trip to. There's no way to say, "No, this is paid-for by a third party." YOU HAVE TO ENTER A FUNDING SOURCE IN THE DATABASE. What the secrtaries recommended in the past is charging 1 cent to one of the school grants. Isn't that stupid?
* Meeting new job candidates or prospective students: this always makes me nervous, as I never know what to say to total strangers like that. I'm actually pretty good at socializing on my own terms, with people I know and know that know me; but pushed into a situation like that, I often come across as awkward, and conversaton flows in a stilted fashion, as I worry I will run out of things to say. Some people don't have any problems, and are supremely self-condient. Well, what can I say, they have certain genes that I lack.