Nearly a year ago there was a number of blog posts I wanted to comment on, but this past year has been so hectic that I never got around to it. Until today!
It all started with blog posts about some problems the faculty blogger was having with a student and discussing two students and their ability to be successful in academia. Not long thereafter, another blogger commented, saying that one shouldn't post about people that work for them under the guise of anonymity. Based on some of the comments on that post, a second blog post made the comment that you wouldn't want to be as honest with your trainees in person as you are anonymously on the web (including some comments from a reader who claims that while she enjoys reading these blogs she would not want to work for any of the people writing them because it makes them seem like bad leaders). There are really two big issues here, and I agree with one and disagree with the other.
First, there is an issue of blogging 'anonymously' and discussing real interactions with real people. I agree that this can be a huge issue. If you are giving a lot of details about your work and the people you work with, at some point someone is going to figure out who you are in real life and who everyone in those posts referred to. Basically, it could come back to bite you in the ass one day. This is why I chose to blog openly as myself and link to my blog from my google+ page and even my lab website. It was a conscious decision I made to ensure that I would be careful about what I posted and only say things online that I would be willing to say to someone in person. Fortunately, I am pretty ballsy and willing to say a lot of things to people, so it hasn't really impacted what I blog about too much. But it does mean that I won't ever discuss specifics about my students, because I know how much it would've killed me if my supervisor had done that. However, a lot of the issues that get brought up in those posts about students/employees/other faculty are important to discuss, they just need to be discussed in a way that can't be linked back to the specific person. It's not always an easy thing to do, but since I want to keep my job I'm willing to work at it.
The second issue that stemmed from this is that all the unpleasantness about our jobs needs, to some extent, to be kept from our trainees to maintain our authority as a leader. I do not like this at all. You do not have to be perfect or unemotional to be a good leader that students will respect. There's nothing wrong with being human, and in the same way that you probably cut students some slack when you know they're going through a rough time, I bet students would be a lot less demanding of their supervisors if they really knew how much was on their plates and how stressed out they were about it. Moreover, this form of leadership keeps giving students a highly idealized vision of what being an academic is like, which is doing the student a huge disservice. Students should know what they are getting in to if they choose an academic career, not find out the hard way their first year on the job.
Lastly, the idea was put forth that perhaps academics who blog about their experiences make worse supervisors. I whole-heartedly disagree, but I am admittedly biased because a) I blog and b) I think I'm an awesome mentor. My experience has been that the people who actually spend time thinking about their role as a supervisor and whether or not they are being a good mentor are usually much better mentors - they are self-aware enough to notice when they make mistakes or things are going wrong in their labs and care enough to try to do something about it. I'm sure there are bloggers who are bad mentors, but there are also many non-bloggers who are bad mentors. To me, the fact that someone is taking the time to organize their thoughts about their job is probably a good sign.
No comments:
Post a Comment