You inconsiderate whore of a faculty member

The BBQ Pit
1

Move over bacon, I’ve gotta bitch.

As some of you have heard me whine about in other threads, I’m trying to finish a thesis (it happens to involve undergraduate departments). I went the harder route than some of my peers, electing to collect my own data (designing a survey, mailing it out to faculty, politely begging for responses). It’s gone pretty well, actually, but it’s been expensive to do and it has sucked up a lot of my life over the past year.

I have been blessed with some very kind faculty who are willing to take the time out of their incredibly busy schedules to fill out the survey of a grad student they don’t know, from another institution, in a discipline with which they’re not affiliated. Some of them have even included kindly comments wishing me luck, or complimenting me on a well-constructed instrument, or apologizing sincerely for conflicts which prevent them from participating. God bless 'em, every one.

And then there are the exceptions.

I can’t say this to my committee, to my advisor, or to the respondents themselves because it would be unprofessional, but I can say it here. FUCK YOU. Fuck you for your prima donna manner, for your convenient memory that makes you forget what it was like when YOU needed data for YOUR fucking dissertation, and for your complete lack of respect for me in your shitty, small-minded, hostile comments. The latest gem ended with “This was a waste of time. I resented your long-winded, trivial questions.” Of course you’re entitled to that opinion oh dear assistant professor of chemistry from a large Midwestern University. I am sure you’re not the only faculty member who, particularly because you’re outside of the social sciences, questioned the uses to which my data would be put, or the nature of my questions. But did you have to share them in this manner?

Because you now have me feeling hurt and defensive, I will point out that for all its flaws (and I’m sure there are some) my survey was reviewed by numerous other faculty. My advisor went over it with a fine-tooth comb. Our human-subjects board also approved it. I pilot tested it among 70 faculty before I mailed it to your unworthy ass, and I even had a sit-down meeting with a professor of chemistry at (dare I say it) a significantly more prestigious university than the one you’re currently at, to discuss how the survey would be received by someone in your field. While you might not agree with his assessment of it (well, obviously you didn’t agree) it would have been nice if you could have thought about how I’d feel running across your rude shitty comment when I’m up entering data at 11:00 pm with a cold as I’ve been doing for hours. This ends an evening of eating a fast-food dinner, leaving the house a mess yet again, and pretty much ignoring my toddler, leaving Daddy to put him to bed. I’m busting my ass (well, as much as I ever bust my ass) to just complete the fricking requirements of this stupid degree and be done with it. You could have put a fucking sock in it, or better yet shoved my survey up your too-important-for-the-likes-of-me ass without returning it. It sucks to read snipy shit like that right now, okay? I ought to be able to laugh at your rudeness but just now, tonight, I can’t. Instead, I am stomping off to bed and I will fall asleep with visions of you accidentally dropping a vat of something very toxic on your lab notes, destroying several years worth of your latest research thereby imperiling your any chance at tenure. I am not sure you belong in a classroom anyway, you vile cunt.

Oh, and you other faculty who also were rude to me? Same goes to you. Fuck you, and you, AND you.

2

And I always thought a good surveyor allowed for the “nonreturns.” Oh, well.

3

Poor Cranky. Allow me to give you a hug.

{{{**CrankyAsAnOldMan}}}

By the way, did one of the schools involved in your study happen to be Ohio State?

And hey, at least you’re living up to your name!

4

I hate snooty, elitist people. Especially snooty, elitist professors who seem to think the social sciences aren’t “real” science. Fuck that.

“Sorry, us soft scientists can sure be so obtuse.”

5

Unfortunately these selfish know-alls don’t always get their come-uppance.

Hopefully your rude correspondent regularly gets flak from his colleagues.

In a milder version, I told a pupil recently to stop leaning back on his chair, in case he fell over. He stopped, then started again when I looked away. Then he fell off it… :smiley:

6

pounds her head on her desk for a moment

I hate people like this. If you don’t have the time, fine. But if you are doing it anyway just do it. Its like any other task being run by someone else. No, you don’t get to do it your way, do it the way you are asked. Even if it is “longwinded and trivial”.

Don’t let the bastatrds get you down. Its not worth it and you have work to do. People like that ass make me suspicious again about hard science education ignoring the fact that we have to be people too. (My main focus is ethics education in engineering, but lack of respect for other people who think and work just as hard is also in there.)

7

Of course. I’ve got loads of nonrespondents. The survey is voluntary. I’m only mildly resentful of those folk, and I can’t whine about those because it’s a part of survey research. I’m bitching about the faculty who go to pains to berate me for daring to ask their overimportant selves to participate in my project.

Lizard, it’s not Ohio State. I wanted to include them, but one of their departments was structured in a way that made them too different from the other institutions.

Oh, and lest I seem to be picking on hard science types, I also got a few hostile responses from other disciplines. It’s just that this was the one I got last night at a bad moment, and it irked me since chemistry (at my pilot institution) had been among my most useful and helpful departments.

8

Perhaps you would consider sending the asst. prof. a “non-return” letter. We social science types send these out frequently. They say something to the effect of:

“We have not yet received your reply to our survey, yadda, yadda, yadda. We appreciate your time and value your input into this research, blah, blah, blah. If you have recently returned the questionnaire, please disregard this notice. Thank you for your time.”

Sure, you don’t give a pickled pitutie about her response, and you’ve already received it, but now she will think that her ranting was all for naught. I doubt she will take the time to reply again.

9

So, let me get this straight. The slag took the time to write that the survey wasted her time? Apparently she must have filled out the survey during her “Be a raging asshole bitch” time that she then couldn’t inflict on someone in her immediate vicinity.

What a waste. Of skin. And air.

You should send back a response to her critique…

“This critique was a waste of ink. I resent your snide, trivial opinion.”
Message ends.

10

Wow! How absolutely rotten. What kind of blackened soul would go out of his or her way to make someone else miserable? A simple ignorance of the survey would have caused him or her (did you say if the person was male or female? I’ve forgotten) no pain, no suffering, no trouble at all. But no - he or she actually took pains to make you feel like garbage, like someone just stepped on you, looked at their shoe to see the mess, then scraped you onto a curb. How barbaric.

I feel for you, Cranky. :frowning:

11

Wanna bet this waste of space already has an inside track to tenure, and is free to abuse students and other faculty alike at will? Nothing like having a rabbi.

Imagine being a grad student or doctoral candidate under this asshole. My heart bleeds. My SIL got her doctorate last year, and tries really hard to give better than she got.

12

sigh Take heart, Cranky. There’s one in every crowd. No matter how perfectly your survey was designed, it was going to stick in someone’s craw–particularly those who have a monster-sized craw to stick things in.

Whenever we do a teaching survey there are always a few responses that make our jaws drop. Eighty students give a TA average to gushingly-positive reviews, and then the eighty-first fills the comment card with tiny script explaining why this is the worst subhuman excuse for a TA he ever had. I don’t know if we catch just manage to catch a few people on the wrong day, or if they’re the sort of people who consider it their duty in life to bitch about everything and have no consideration for anyone’s feelings, or if we’re just catching flack because their mommies and daddies didn’t love them, or what the hell their brain damage is.

In your case, the dipshits in question had the option to not do the survey if it’s such a titanic waste of their precious, precious time. They have absolutely no excuse for making meanspirited little remarks about it! Feel secure in the knowledge that you are a better academic and a better person than they are.

(And in the future when some drippy-nosed undergrads insist upon wasting your time, take a deep breath, remember this moment, smile, and pat them on head instead of throttling the life out of them.)

13

Huh?

I say again, HUH?

I’m sure I misread that.

walks off mumbling about anti-rabbi sentiment

14

IMHO, I think you should make copies and send them to the butt wipe’s dept chair and dean. Be sure to thank them for employing an individual so dedicated to the discovery of new knowledge, or even better, cut and paste in part of their mission statement to that effect.

'course that’s just me. I tend to burn bridges…

15

I don’t get the rabbi comment either. Did you mean rabbit? I still don’t get it.

Cranky, you know that academia has its own special kind of arrogance. These are the folks whose words are pure wisdom, whose actions are perfection, and whose publications are the synthesis of all knowledge resulting in the Truth. And, as such, they deserve their own category in your results section. The “AA” slice of the pie, to be known as “Alternate Approaches” or some other equally obscure term. Publish it and I’ll personally frame that pie chart with a notation that “AA” really means “Academic Assholes.”

16

I LOVE this idea! And you should do it several times. With luck, you might make her head explode.

17

I went to grad school. I taught at a college for 5 years. I now work in industry. Now industry has some big egos and some assholes but is nothing, I mean nothing, like academia.

Academia mostly disgusts me and I take pleasure when I hear them complain about low salaries. Many people in academia are arrogant beyond belief.

One story was about when some guy shot his master…er…advising professor and killed him since he failed to get his masters degree after 7 years. It so happened that the professor he shot hadn’t completed his PH.D. A professor in the class I was in ranted and raved about this for several minutes. He was outraged that the man only received 10 years in prison. He wondered that if killing a Ph.D. would only get you 10 years then killing someone with a masters degree would only get you 3 and a B.A. only 1 year or so. I thought he was joking but it became evident that he was serious. Finally I raised my hand and said “No. They are both human beings and would be treated the same under the law”. He looked at me and it took several seconds for what I said to dawn on him and then he realized he looked silly.

PEOPLE IN ACADEMIA ACTUALLY THINK LIKE THIS! If you don’t have a Ph.D you are a fourth rate human being, if that. If you do, then it depends what school you attended. If not prestigious then you are a third rate human being.

What also gets me is that everyone is so judgemental about everything. When I was in Math grad school, I remember not considering Social Science a real science or even academic. Stupid of me. Academia is soooooo into grouping people in heirarchies and disregarding inherent value in the person. Yes, their are arrogant asses in industry but a pale flicker of light to academia. I hate to generalize but I usually don’t like most academics I meet even today.

Blink, (ex-academic)