The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Quote from: paultuttle on April 17, 2025, 02:58:25 AM

Quote from: the_geneticist on April 16, 2025, 11:36:22 AMAlas!  While I have the lab coat & "emergency pants", I don't have an alert buzzer alarm or a cape.
Perhaps I need one

No, please no.

Edna Mode gave multiple reasons why superheroes should not wear capes.

No capes!!! They get caught in things like rockets, jet turbines, or a tornado vortex. Not to mention exhaust fans, mills and lathes, and, on one known occasion, a ninja blender. They can snag on tall buildings, flag poles, and even water towers. If you swirl mightily for effect, the cape can fling things off tables and/or hit people in the face. Depending on what material they are made out of, sometimes dry cleaning is necessary. Not to mention, they can be terribly hot especially if they cling around your neck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL3w73MAuIM

I am trying to be charitable here.  I really did think she was more or less my age, and tenured.  I do not know why I thought that, perhaps I had some one else in mind.  But the fact that she is apparently much younger, and without tenure or even permanent faculty contract status/ tenure-track, added to the fact that she is a biologist, well, that makes it worse for her, not better.  Why?  Because as a younger, non-permanent person, she is not only much closer in age to the TAs, nbut also shares their employment precarity, and, as such, she ought to be able to realize that, whatever the TAs' damned contracts may size, or whatever the potential accident consequences that could result from failure to force coat compliance, these TAs are very very likely to be overwhelmed by fear (and perhaps overt threats) in the face of rules noncompliance, and corresponding fear, or at least doubt, that his taking a hard stand to enforce compliance could result in adminiscritter nonsupport in face of (atleast somewhat likely) undergrad blowback (this attitude likely being aided by TAs personal experiences/ observations, esp in hs but even in undergrad years).  Now, as to the biologist part: I am going to be harsh here, but since I have the virtue of being right, and since I have extensive k-12 experience in addition to higher ed, I can do so.  Simply put, as a biologist, geneticist should know that traditionally-aged undergrads, especially freshmen, are nothing resembling biological adults, and will not be till at least their mid-20s.  Especially the boys.  It is not rational to expect 1) mushheaded freshmen to act like mature adults, *esp* wrt a) impulse control b) critical thinking and consequence-analysis, 2) barely older than them TAs to have much more capacity here, and/or willingness to act like a drill sgt.  I have seen from geneticist and some other posters both recently and throughout the years on both sets of fora, this unwillingness to accept the non-adultness (whenever it suits them to do so-- cf., here we find a strange combo of insisting that these lab kids are adults, but then just treating them as children by telling them to wear coats without telling them why it is supposedly necessary) of (the overwhelming majority) of traditionally-aged undergrads.   This is stunning, and creates problems (and bad pedagogical praxis) that are more or less own-goals. 

Chere madame,

I do not know how they do it en Provence, but around here we do have the ability to speak freely on fora such as these, and get, therefore, to react less than happily to being given orders.

To the CPAP vendor I fired months ago for lying to the insurance carrier--this was during a three-way call:

When will you ever learn?

I blocked you on the landline, and now I'll have to block you on the cell as well--don't you think it's a waste of your time to call me every month and also have Verizon leave me an email notifying me that you called? Covering your behind doesn't help as I've been getting my supplies from another vendor.

No, I'm not going to harass the library about weeding the collection. Getting us the stuff we need is their speciality, and they're good at it. I trust them to decide when it's time to send old journals to recycling. 

What I did say:  Beloved Spouse, I hate that you've been hurting for the past couple of months. I'm glad the pain management doc we saw yesterday confirmed that you don't need more back fusion surgery, and that your problem is in your SI joint; he feels sure that steroid injections, every 3 months, will fix the problem.

What I had to bite my tongue to keep from screaming saying to him: I know you're hurting and feeling lousy because this is exactly what I've been dealing with, every day, for over five years! And the steroids don't work on me (not uncommon with SI joint dysfunction), which doesn't matter since I'm diabetic and shouldn't use steroids anyway!

Ahem. Better to say it here and get it out of my system, than to say it to him and start a fight. I'm sure I'd cross the line and say some really nasty things. Ain't nobody got time for that. 

Quote from: Vkw10 on April 18, 2025, 07:35:02 PMNo, I'm not going to harass the library about weeding the collection. Getting us the stuff we need is their speciality, and they're good at it. I trust them to decide when it's time to send old journals to recycling. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Quote from: AmLitHist on April 19, 2025, 06:11:38 AMWhat I did say:  Beloved Spouse, I hate that you've been hurting for the past couple of months. I'm glad the pain management doc we saw yesterday confirmed that you don't need more back fusion surgery, and that your problem is in your SI joint; he feels sure that steroid injections, every 3 months, will fix the problem.

What I had to bite my tongue to keep from screaming saying to him: I know you're hurting and feeling lousy because this is exactly what I've been dealing with, every day, for over five years! And the steroids don't work on me (not uncommon with SI joint dysfunction), which doesn't matter since I'm diabetic and shouldn't use steroids anyway!

Wow, I am sorry.  I can sympathize a little bit, but luckily the steroids helped me.

If your problem happens to be that your pelvis gets misaligned and squishes the SI joint on one side, I'd be happy to PM you some PT exercises that helped with this.

Kay, you are extrapolating and hand-wringing far too much.  I'm solidly mid career with a rolling 3 year faculty contract.  My job position is not precarious (in fact we just hired 2 more folks with the same job title).  I'm on a hard money salary, so I'm just fine, thanks for your concern.

Legally, our students are adults.  The "oh the brain isn't done developing until 25" is leftover scare tactics from the 1980s war on drugs (yes, I'm old enough to remember that).  They know the goggles & lab coats are for safety. In fact, most high schools require lab coats in lab classes now.  We used to say "meh, anything goes, let's mouth-pipette the dangerous chemicals and explode things for fun", but times have changed.

As one last anecdote, we have one previous Graduate Teaching Assistant who is no longer eligible to be hired as a lab instructor due to repeated non-compliance regarding safety.  But there are >100 others who are happy to fill that position.

Never thought my grumble about one TA would snowball into me apparently needing to design a superhero lab outfit, but it's a good laugh.

Congrats on your job security.   TAs do not have this, and adjuncts do not either.   Those TAs are also much younger and inexperienced than you are, with this producing the strong likelihood of fear.

Now of course 18yos are legally adults-- one of the worst policy decisions we have ever made as a country.   But this legal status is not biological or psychological status, and your '80s culture war scare tactic' remark just makes you look, ahem, incompetent.

Quote from: Liquidambar on April 19, 2025, 07:25:19 AM

Quote from: AmLitHist on April 19, 2025, 06:11:38 AMWhat I did say:  Beloved Spouse, I hate that you've been hurting for the past couple of months. I'm glad the pain management doc we saw yesterday confirmed that you don't need more back fusion surgery, and that your problem is in your SI joint; he feels sure that steroid injections, every 3 months, will fix the problem.

What I had to bite my tongue to keep from screaming saying to him: I know you're hurting and feeling lousy because this is exactly what I've been dealing with, every day, for over five years! And the steroids don't work on me (not uncommon with SI joint dysfunction), which doesn't matter since I'm diabetic and shouldn't use steroids anyway!

Wow, I am sorry.  I can sympathize a little bit, but luckily the steroids helped me.

If your problem happens to be that your pelvis gets misaligned and squishes the SI joint on one side, I'd be happy to PM you some PT exercises that helped with this.

Thanks for the offer!  I've done a lot of the PT exercises - and got sciatica for my trouble! As my mother and uncle used to say, "Gettin' old ain't for sissies!"  I do appreciate the thought, though.

Quote from: AmLitHist on April 20, 2025, 01:38:19 PMAs my mother and uncle used to say, "Gettin' old ain't for sissies!"

Indeed!  The young'uns don't know how good they have it.

Family member doesn't wear sunscreen because it 'causes cancer.' Hmmm.... I did not know how to reply to this statement at the time. After thinking about it, I have a number of things that come to mind that I'd like to say, but they're not rated PG.

Don't just tie a knot in your holy socks and leave them on the dresser...the trash can over there has a use.

Quote from: Minervabird on April 21, 2025, 11:56:24 AMDon't just tie a knot in your holy socks and leave them on the dresser...the trash can over there has a use.

But, but "holy socks" are sacred!