Well, I guess we won’t be moving this to MPSIMS and out of the Pit, now.
The entrance line at MPSIMS is too long anyway.
It should be. My fans absolutely adore me.
'Course, I’m allowed to post past noon–unlike some mods.
The chemistry department must envy you guys.
Seriously, Extrakun, it can be unpleasant to be challenged like that, and it may even seem, well, “un-collegial,” but there is a long tradition in scholarship of just this sort of critique and response. The idea is that your thesis’ flaws are exposed (without which step they can hardly be mended), your ideas refined, and your rhetoric sharpened by this process. Don’t think of your classmates as opponents, but rather as the sparring partners who help you train to meet your real adversary. They’re on your side, and even the ones who sometimes swing a little too freely in an effort to impress the trainer are doing you a favor, even if neither of you thinks so.
It sounds as if your classmate saw an opportunity to show off by challenging your use of the term and you, either out of shock at a perceived attack, or because you were less than confident that you were correct, didn’t vigorously defend it. It would surprise me a great deal if defending your own proposals and critiquing those of other teams were not an important part of the whole exercise, in which case you missed a bet by keeping silent after the other presentations, too. But experience is another way we learn. Next time around, you’ll have the advantage of knowing your classmate doesn’t know all the economic jargon he thinks he knows, and that he likes to bluff.
Best regards and wishes, but mostly, calm down. It’s incredibly unlikely the incident did you any lasting harm at all. If you must, bring your vindication to your instructor’s attention, but don’t be surprised or angry when he asks, “Then why didn’t you say so?”
ExtraKun, despite everything i said, i want to make it clear that i do believe that you genuinely felt that this guy was intentionally trying to make you look bad.
And, as i said earlier in the thread, i do believe that it’s possible that this was, in fact, his intention.
The main point of my argument has been to assert that, just because someone corrects you or disagrees with you in an academic setting, doesn’t mean they are trying to backstab you or make you look bad. Also, i wanted to reinforce the idea that vigorous debate and disagreement are, as The King of Soup suggests, important aspects of the process of learning in a scholarly environment.
I think, in situations like this, the best defence is to always be prepared. That way, when someone challenges you, you are ready to meet the challenge and defend your ideas. If you’re ready for that, it really doesn’t matter whether the motivation behind their actions is good or bad; either way, you can hold your ground.
And, if someone does make a habit of challenging people in an unpleasant manner just to be an asshole, you can be sure that other people will notice this behaviour and will look unfavorably upon it. I mentioned earlier in the thread an incident in a seminar where a guy made a nasty comment; well, that guy was quite well known for making such comments, and every time he did it, everyone else in the room would look at each other and roll their eyes. He was a very smart guy, but was also regarded as something of a tactless jackass.
This might be a sensitive issue, and I don’t want to phrase my question in an insensitive way, so bear with me here. I believe that in order to understand the situation fully, I have to ask ExtraKun where this university is and whether English is the native language of either ExtraKun or his classroom adversary. Although ExtraKun seems to be very fluent in English (and maybe it is his native language and I’m just wrong about this), several details in the OP, including certain uses that are not common in the United States – like “at university,” “business module,” “wrongly,” “studying an economics elective,” “lecturer,” “giving a clarification” – lead me to suspect that:
(1) Some or all of the individuals in this scenario are not native English speakers and thus are coming off in a way they do not intend to as a result of their imperfect use of English.
(2) The individuals in this scenario are not speaking English at all and ExtraKun is offering us his account of the discussion in translation.
(3) Even if all those involved are native English speakers, this classroom is not in the United States and thus there are different expectations or assumptions regarding how fellow students might challenge each other.
If any of these things is true, then it would explain some differences in how some of us are interpreting this situation.
ExtraKun has said that he’s in Singapore.
Mhendo, I agree with you that a student making a presentation should expect to be challenged and shouldn’t take these challenges as a personal attack. If ExtraKun had been upset by the actions of another classmate, I would have said his reaction was wrong. But he made it clear he was upset not because of the challenge itself but because the challenge came from a person who had pretended to be his friend. And I feel he has good reason to be upset over that - the issue isn’t academic challenge, it’s betrayal of trust.
But, at the risk of flogging a dead horse, let me ask you this: if the question would have been perfectly acceptable coming from anyone else, why is it not acceptable coming from a friend?
Or, to put it more generally, what types of questions can friends reasonably ask in an academic setting without being considered traitors to the friendship? Where should the line be drawn? Should friends just shut up altogether? Should they lob soft balls to make you look good?
I’m genuinely curious as to where you (and anyone else) draw the line on this issue.
Thanks for the clarrification, all that stuff peeps were saying about "the discussion between me and grown-ups " rubbed the wrong way.
English is not my first language - though it is the language of choice for almost everything in Singapore. However, the friend whom was asking the question is a native too and his English is quite fluent too.
Ah, nope.
Yep, there seems to be a whole lot of culture difference from where I come from and the US.
Something very similar happened to me way back when I was in college (more than 20 years ago)
I was giving a presentation in a class called 'The Physics of Music" which dealth with the particularly horrible acoustics in a particular classroom that music students had to use for ear training and music theory among other things.
Right at the beginning of the presentation a young man (acquaintance) in my class contradicted my findings on the composition of the classroom walls. I was sure he was wrong and I was sure that he was thinking of a different classroom entirely but I wasn’t well prepared for my presentation and that little question, at the very start of my presentation, really rattled me and threw off the entire pace of my piece.
I’m pretty sure he did it because he thought it would be funny to see how I reacted. He got what he wanted. It completely threw me off track but not so much because of his remarks as because I was really very poorly prepared for my presentation. If I’d done a better job of gathering data on the physical properties of the room I could have cooly refuted his comments but, as I said, I hadn’t really done the work, I had thrown together the project at the last minute with barely any research which is why I got so easily flustered when he questioned me.
Looking back it was an important lesson in having your shit together and knowing how to defuse this type of attack. He was wrong after all, I just didn’t have the data to prove it or the self-confidence or composure to stand up to his comments.
ExtraKun can learn a very valuable lesson from this in being prepared and being able to diffuse difficult situations. It took me a while to learn that.
With strangers and aquaintances you maintain a certain level of defensiveness. With family and friends you put aside that defensiveness and expose your vulnerability. The expectation is that you should be able to trust these people not to use this lowered defensiveness and vulnerability as a means to attack you.
I couldn’t quite grasp the context of this post (it’s way past my bedtime here), but if it is specifically to my case, I feel that the friend in question
a) is not asking a question, or have asked a question in a strange and offending way. There might be different ways to interpert “I am not asking a question, I just want to make a clarification” (yes, those are his exact working, more or less), but it just comes off wrong.
b) could have just told me after the presentation - it wouldn’t hurt him any less, right?
c) does not consider that the presentation is graded, a whooping 40% of overall marks. We have numerous presentations before this final big one, and those everyone in the class contributes and correct mistakes freely. (NB: Those presentations are on different topics and other management matters before the final big one).
Actually, c) is the biggest kicker. He has heard us presented numerous times (did I mention that actually his team and my team are actually one big gang of friends who do just everything together?) Yet he waited till then to clarify our mistake.
If it is not c), I would have just let it passed. From my point of view, I honestly have no joy whatsoever cutting my friends down to size when it is something affecting their grade - moreso if they haven’t been slacking and have been preparing hard. Putting things in persceptive, his little remark is unlikely to cause harm, but that he would do this to a friend is something just not acceptable by any form of Asian values (yes, it’s that ‘face’ thing again).
At any rate, his stunt got noticed and another group told me something regarding that character. It seems that my friend made this a rather regular habit and caused some bad feelings last semster. Hence I guess this is just his personality/habit, and it’s nothing really personal, and I am willing to let it pass.
Ah, I don’t think I was clear in the OP, but I believed I mentioned we defended ourselves. The guy in charge of the segment explain what we thought the term meant and our sources. But the friend in question just went on and on.
That’s a very impressive non-answer.
Your response presumes that any questioning in such a situation is an attack, and a violation of trust. You reach your conclusion based on the very assumption that i was asking you to clarify.
If this is hard for you to grasp, maybe i can phrase it een more simply: is there any circumstance when questioning or correcting a friend in an acdemic setting would not constitute an attack or a betrayal of trust, in your opinion?
If your answer is “yes,” then perhaps you could explain what such a circumstance might be, and where you draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable intervention by friends.
If your answer is “no,” i suggest you book a ticket out of fantasyland.
Friends should have a concern for my personal welfare, that mere classmates are not going to have. When a question / comment has the potential to harm me, I would expect a friend to exercise discretion rather than use the academic setting to justify causing me harm.
Obviously, a friend’s efforts to prevent me coming to harm has limits, I wouldn’t expect a friend to help me cheat, but taking a potshot in class that can make me look bad on a graded presentation is something I would expect a friend to avoid.
ExtraKun, has he said anything to you since the presentation? I wouldn’t let him know that it bothered you.
So he heard your presentation before you gave it and didn’t say anthing about the mistake until class? Nice guy.
That’s not backstapping. It’s just silly (and annoying). What’s backstabbing is what happened to one of my friends in university. The friend was assigned a project partner who refused to do any work and then, the day before the project was due, dropped the class without telling anyone–not even my friend. The professor is the one who broke the news to friend: “I can give you some extra time to do this project, but since the rest of the quarter’s work really depends on you having it done, I can’t give you much.”
Oh, and backstabbing is pretending to be my friend while you’re helping the boss steal my money with fake deductions, telling the South Korean government I’m making less than I really am and pocketing the taxes, etc., I paid on the real amount. *That’s backstabbing. Yes, it really happened, and if you’re considering working for a hagweon in Incheon, send me e-mail so I can tell you the name of the place so you don’t walk around with a dagger between your shoulder blades.
Mhendo, the concept of friends shouldn’t take that much effort to explain. The fact that you find it so inexplicable causes me to repeat a question already asked - do you have any friends?