Why don’t you get your ears pierced and wear drop earrings? They will make your face look smaller and less round.
Why don’t you settle in one place and start a family? It’s what everybody else is doing.
You don’t like your nose? There are non-invasive procedures for that these days.
You’re doing a PhD? I’m not sure if men will be all that pleased to marry somebody with a doctorate.
Aren’t cartoons for children?
Aren’t science museums for children?
Just get a real job.
Never show any weaknesses you might have, don’t let other people know.
If only you would apply yourself to one thing.
Love yourself for who you are.
Number ten always seems to be an afterthought following one or several of 1-9.
N.B. This is not genuine advice from me to you. These are things that have been said to me and other people in similar positions in life to myself over the recent years. If you’re after real advice ask a close friend. If I am to advise you on anything off this list, it would be not to jack with your face without having a really good think about it first. And then to consult with professionals. Go with your gut. The healthy gut bacteria should produce healthy gut feelings.
Here’s a picture of a puppy if you need calming down.
Warning: this is a stream-of-consciousness (more so than usual) sort of entry.
Not long ago I was on a conference panel called “meet the editors”. All of the other panellists were (are) in charge of a printed publication, peer-reviewed or not, and I was there in my capacity as a web editor. In advance of our editors’ roundtable, I had asked some colleagues and my closest contemporary on the panel whether or not there would be a point in my presence at the event, as I imagined any questions the audience would have are likely to be directed at the journal and magazine editors. You may call this a case of sour grapes, but I considered it merely a statement to be acknowledged. As a matter of fact, I was right. Of course, I did sit on the panel in order to discuss the newly revamped website of which I am in care, what content we are working on, and to make some bad jokes along the lines of “please don’t use the contact-us form to ask me if I can tell you more about a 16th century ship called [name]; I always aim to help, but in these cases, I unfortunately, really cannot.”
In academia, as much as we are assimilating into the digital world, and in some cases even questioning the usefulness of our paper journals when most of them are digitised anyway, the printed form of publication still feels like a validation to strive for. Online presence certainly counts in terms of outreach, but it is often seen as the less formal cousin; albeit the sort of cousin that gets away with being snarky and sarcastic about any given topic. (Nonetheless: Hurray for outreach!) Having a regular, paid spot at online outpost, writing about your field of interest is a step further up the ladder, but nothing will beat a hard-copy journal with your name on the contents page.
Does the reasoning for this lie in the fact that “anybody” – provided they have internet access – can self-publish on the internet, or because a lot of content can be obtained for “free” on the internet, and therefore must be of sub-par quality compared to paid-for material? The matter of fact is that a lot of people spend a lot of time producing content for the internet, whether it is their job, or whether they receive compensation for their efforts. I am a consumer of a healthy number of lifestyle blogs, fan-works (art, fiction, etc.), academic columns, and news-channels of the internet; some of these creators have grown from creating their content out of goodwill to turning their channels into one of their main occupations. You can be a blogger or a youtuber for a living, it’s no different from being a writer and a producer (except you might have to work MORE), yet some of these creators still get asked – especially by members of the older generation – “what kind of a job is that?”
And if you are a fandom member producing content for other fans, the comment above this picture is not an uncommon thing to hear.
If you think about it, asking your friends on facebook if their university has access to a particular journal paper you can’t get hold of on your own system is essentially crowdsourcing one job (fine – one task) for a librarian, yet the action of asking across the internet feels less formal than if you actually had needed to approach a librarian or records officer to do the same job. (It probably also works out much faster; I never said there weren’t any benefits.) So the internet makes things informal.
*cough*signing up to buy from online shops or even to comment on popular websites takes forEVER*cough*
The informality is a double-edged sword. For one, copyrights are often breached. Theft happens in the world of fandoms, but here there are vigilantes who report stolen work, and maintain the sense of community. Unfortunately, this sort of behaviour is not uncommonly also exhibited by large websites towards individual producers, who in turn are protected only be relatively weak creative commons licences and cannot take proper action against plagiarism.
On the other hand, the informality allows mass-engagement. The recent discussions surrounding Jeremy Hunt and the NHS have made the rounds online, and where social-media users are often referred to as a “mob”, the fact that healthcare professionals are able to express their thoughts on the matter and engage the public in this debate can mobilise greater action on the cause.
However, sometimes the informality is just that – informal. If it isn’t an official statement on paper with a proper letterhead and a billion signatures, people won’t take it seriously.
So where does that leave us?
If you make things for fun online, even though your creations are appreciated by the like-minded, you have “too much time on your hands”.
If you are paid to do things on the internet, it’s not as valid as doing things “IRL”. (In real life, to the Luddites.)
If you are a social activist on the internet, you are part of a mob that gets over-excited for very little, under the protection of your relative anonymity.
So far, so negative. With that being said, online is certainly fertile soil for people to practice their art and become even better at writing/painting/producing/editing/entertaining. And nothing is going to stop people from being creative, because frankly, “blogger” and “youtuber” have made it as legitimate jobs despite all the suspicion.
So I’m at this panel, nodding along to my seniors answering questions about getting published, scribbling notes for my own benefit, and gradually come around to a question rather than a conclusion: while web-editing is providing me a list of professional experiences, how can I use “my” platform, a website for a learned society and all its media channels, to lift my fellow academics’ non-academic skills?
The full stop in the title is intended, as I have been told that it sounds more assured than without.
Truth is, I am not very good at being opinionated in public*. People keep insisting that it is easy, so perhaps I am simply not a natural. This is a massive handicap, considering I am a PhD student, where it is expected of me to form opinions on literature that I read, and analyses of data that I collect. This does not mean that I am without opinion. I think that, while the projected HS2 railway that will serve London-Birmingham-Manchester could be a good idea – mainly because the current Virgin Trains services between MCR-LDN offer rather… demanding levels of customer service, and also if it allows the de-crowding of the capital – I do not approve of any alleged tweaking of the law** that took place for the ruling to be passed. I dislike overly flowery language in big tomes of importance to my research – because it takes just that little bit longer to process the information beyond the superficial – despite sometimes being guilty of the crime myself. I think it is sweet when people try to bowl other people over with big words and complicated grammar structures, but I don’t buy it. I think Queen Elizabeth II is cool, but otherwise don’t care much for the Royal Family. I am not a fan of Thomas Kuhn’s writing because I like a bit of narrative in the things that I read. I like wind-farms and the occasional piece of 60s architecture. I think nuclear power is the way to go for the time being, and that it is a shame that there is a need for an International Women’s Day.
Off the coast of the Netherlands, summer 2012.
Mind you, now I have just noticed a relatively significant increase in the number of followers of this blog, and am in two minds about whether or not I want to weather my laundry at all.
What was I saying again? Opinions.
Why are my opinions stymied?
The clear-cut answer and example: a fear of “doing it wrong”. Next to me on my desk is a fascinating-looking book*** that I am about to read and review. The author of this book is one of my supervisors. While I am aware that one of the reasons an academic may want to write a book is to either introduce new discourse into the field, or inject new arguments into old debates, this does not stop me from worrying about whether I will get the wrong end of the stick, and interpret their writing wrongly. To summarise, I am concerned I will offend the supervisor, or embarrass myself with my stupid opinions. To remedy this, I am telling myself that perhaps my point-of-view is, after all, valid as a particular interpretation of this book, and could still provide a teeny tiny insight into how the book might be received by an interested member of the audience. Teeny tiny. No big opinions here. Move along.
The more abstract example: as an early-career researcher, and a still relatively junior member of society (what with the ageing population and all), I sometimes feel like my opinion does not matter. There are always people who are better read, and more informed, who can provide a better opinion. Then again, we all read different collections of literature, and take different types of data, leading to, hopefully, some measure of expertise in our pinprick on the academic map. But what if we simply are not that gregarious? Is it then our fault that we chose an academic route, where we need to work up our moxie to give everybody a piece of our information-overloaded minds? Chances are that we are brewing away in private, over-thinking an argument far beyond those with the loudest voices, and any resulting opinion remains at the manky bottom of the laundry pile.
Thank goodness I have a belief in the stonking greatness of my project to forget all about this, some of the time.
Now, I would like to apologise for my opinions (except I’m not really sorry), especially to those who may have joined up for a nice bit of coffee-break science communication chatter (opinions!) or funny insight into my project (opinions and focus groups! Oh my!). I can only hope for your patience.
*where “in public” means occasions where others, likely strangers, will hear.
The Real World for Young People 