…also involved is the question of being mugged by the victims, or by those who would become victims. Being pushed and pummelled by people who were feeling weak and who were not making good decisions, but whose continued good will I really needed, is of course my oldest story. At work one can add to it the pushing and pulling of those requiring care.
I have fallen prey to all of these people more times than I realize, sometimes on the impression that only by mollifying them could I escape certain death, and other times on the impression that we had an emergency so extreme, or an opportunity for us so unique, that beggars not being in a position to choose, we ought to seize the day. Here are some major incidents to review.
1995 «Do as I suggest. I know you have been doing what I suggest since before I had the Ph.D. and you have other priorities now. But I, by virtue of who I am, have authority you do not and so with my backing what you have been trying may at last work.» (Did it, bad idea; it meant this person got to work with me for a while, though.)
1998 «It is impossible to do as you suggest [even though I was right and it was possible for me]. Furthermore, in this institution our instructions are not to do as you suggest [even though they were and still are, now more than ever].» (Did it, bad idea; it meant these people got my help on their projects for a while, though.)
2004 «I will back you in doing as you suggest, stick with me.» (After some destruction I got out of this with the help of the present weblog and its audience; the person does not speak to me.)
2008 «It is impossible to do as you suggest, and essential to repeat errors from 1998. Because of who I am the strategy tried out in 1998 effort will work.» (I said no to this and the person does not speak to me.)
2009 «We are the people you want to work with, at last.» (I signed on, but in such a way that possible failure would not destroy me personally. It cost more effort than I had foreseen, and the futility of this effort was concealed from me so that the effort would still be made. Everything failed, for no good reason, and it is painful.)
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I think a great deal of this has to do with gender roles – women being expected to serve.
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What I have to say is that one´s colleagues elsewhere may be the only people to work with, and/but if one´s local conditions are so poor that they need attention so one can free up time and space to even be who one needs to be in order to speak with people in the rational world, one has a difficult conundrum.
Why is it that we have to have these intense involvements here? Because one does need infrastructure and people to work with, even if the people we work with are not our most important collaborators. Still we need a daily life and we need solidarity and ingenuity, since our programs are constantly under threat of being cut (cf. firings, forced resignations as dramatic examples, but there is more). And because we are so isolated.
I would like to be where there were more infrastructure and general support, so that people did not have to cling to each other so. It is difficult to escape, however; ever since I started working here my image of myself has been of treading water while (a) drowning people held onto my feet and tried to pull me down and (b) large primates threw me back into the drowning pool each time I managed to clamber up to the side.
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I am so tired of listening to derision and taking blows to my own self and on behalf of others.
I always knew a research job was right for me, and I was always told that these jobs were a «racket» and I would not be good enough to get one, anyway; and I was also told I, a girl, would not be able to have any kind of job, anyway. And then I got jobs, but never a research job. Now I have too much debt from being on the market («it is an investment, dear; if you do not take on another loan so as to go to that conference, it is only because you are not serious») to be in a position to make a different kind of move.
And I am still very good at what I do and I have just had an excellent semester since for the first time in 14 years I was not saddled with a plethora of language requirement courses. But no, it is not the only thing to do, or the only good thing to do, and no, to be good at it I do not have to say it is the best or the only thing to do, or look down upon people large enough to imagine something else.
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It is true what I suggest, namely that you have to ignore everyone and follow your research path, but my problem is having been made to see, traumatically, early on, that that path would attract lethal force. I have been terrified to follow it since and I see that many years later I must still recover from this.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 