Full Circle

This year marks ten years since I graduated from Colgate University with my Bachelor’s degree. Being a reunion year, I have thought more than usual about the decisions that led me from who and where I was then to who and where I am now. Chief among those decisions is my choice to go to Georgia Tech for graduate school rather than one of the other programs that offered me a place. It was a hard choice and I was deeply skeptical of moving to Atlanta. Another offer, from Boston University, was incredibly tempting. It would have kept me in the Northeast, where I was comfortable and things were familiar. I got along famously with the professor at BU who I would be working with and with some of the other faculty members. So how did I end up at Georgia Tech instead?

Most graduate schools invite accepted Master’s and Doctoral students to visit, meet with faculty and students, and get an in-person feel for the graduate program. It’s an important thing to do; the graduate program you are in will shape the next few years of your life (and possibly much more than that) and will have a supersized effect on your happiness and well-being. My visit to Boston University went really well all except for the moment when an older professor mentioned that female students didn’t have a place in graduate school. I don’t remember his name or even his exact words a decade later but I remember wondering if I could ever put myself through years in a program where I would undoubtedly have to take classes from someone who believed I shouldn’t be there not because I was personally unqualified but because of my gender.

I never had the heart to tell the young, female professor I would have been researching with why I really turned the program down.

While a graduate student at Georgia Tech, I spent many of my semesters as a Teaching Assistant (TA) for undergraduate lab classes. This entailed attending lectures, holding office hours, teaching lab sections, and grading papers. As a first year TA, I remember looking up to the older TA’s who had so much more experience and were so much less stressed about it than I was. Then, a few years later - though it felt quite sudden, I was the older TA. In the middle of a lecture on nuclear decay, the professor made a joke that I had been hearing since my first year.

”Do you know what degree girl’s go to college to get?”
”Mrs!”

Don’t ask me how he wrapped that up into the lecture material. He managed to include that little gem about twice a semester though. It wasn’t the only such comment he made either. Everyone taking his classes knew that he thought relatively little of women in college. I rolled my eyes and went back to watching the lecture. I had so neatly written off the comment that I had heard so many times before at that point that I was confused when one of the first year TA’s came up to me after class to ask how I could stand ”it.”

“Haven’t you been TA-ing for him for years?” she asked me. “How can you stand him being so disrespectful?” The real answer was “Yes but I like getting paid and just want to graduate already.” I’m sure I said something else in reality though. The new TA asked to be switched to another class and was accommodated. I simultaneously admired her and thought it was a bit of a futile move – she was just replaced with a different female TA. The next time the professor made a sexist comment, something super witty about women belonging in the kitchen, it was harder to shake off. What I had previously accepted as normal started to feel embarrassing.

I had bigger fish to fry though. I was a fifth year and months away from graduating. I continued my teaching job. I graduated. I only occasionally thought back on the professor and his commentary on women.

Very recently, I was on a conference call with a group of researchers. Someone’s name was mentioned that I did not recognize and I did some searching to find out who they were and what they were working on. Alongside professional search results was an article in Science that mentioned the researcher. Naturally curious, I opened it and was pretty shocked to find myself reading about a professor at Boston University that was brought up on sexual harassment charges years after the fact because graduate students had been unwilling to jeopardize their careers. I’ve included a link to the article at the bottom of this post though I will warn that I found it to be pretty upsetting.

I can’t know now whether the professor in the article is the same one who once made a comment to me that heavily influenced my choice of where to go to graduate school. There is a good chance that it is though. I can’t help but think that I dodged a bullet. I've struggled with how to conclude this post. Should things like this happen? No. Will they continue to happen? Probably yes. Do I feel like I am better at handling criticism and inappropriate comments following my time in graduate school? Yes. Will everyone else feel the same? Nope.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/disturbing-allegations-sexual-harassment-antarctica-leveled-noted-scientist

Doing Things by Halves

Here's a very quick post (only one week late) while I work on some longer posts...

Last Monday, Memorial Day, my husband and I celebrated our eighth anniversary of being us. On Memorial Day 2010, we had our first date - a flight around Atlanta and dinner. We've been both flying and eating out together ever since then. This year also marked a milestone that we won't ever hit again - we've been married for half of our relationship. After I mentioned that, my husband quipped "And we've lived together for half our marriage!"

All of this makes me wonder where we'll be in another eight years. If I've learned anything though, it's safe to say that we probably won't be anywhere or doing anything that I'd expect.