Faculty Incivility The Rise of the Academic Bully Culture and What to Do About It

Faculty incivility is a book revealing the dark side of academia,
It includes gender discrimination, bullying, mobbing etc.
And it’s all about to get power and be able to be in charge of everything.
I found this book when I was searching journals for my literature review.
When I read the abstract of the book,
I know I want to read it.
I think this book can answer a lot of questions on my mind.
I can feel something similar from my life of being a graduate student.
Before I get in graduate school,
I didn’t know there are so many hidden rules in academia,
I thought graduate school is a place people need to concentrate to their study,
because there are so many things you need to read for your research,
But in reality,I found I need to spend more time on playing social game
like the American reality show “Survivor”,
If I want to be comfortable in the environment,
I need to make alliance with people to isolate someone,
I need to create chaos by deceiving, hurting people’s feeling…
Or you can just isolate yourself from all these game players
 with uncomfortable life every time 
when you are having classes with these people.
And I choose the second one.

"Faculty incivility" is talking about academia in U.S.A.
but from what I see in Taiwan,
It’s not much different.
I can feel something wrong in the campus,
feel the manipulation, mobbing, negative energy... and I talked about it.
Then found out talking about these is something you shouldn’t do,
coz that earn me a name as a trouble maker.
People start to make me think I’m too sensitive
but in the same time, they want more juicy comments from you,
Then they would be able to spice these comments up,
And use it to build up relationship with professors
Or use them to against you when you don’t help them to get what they want.
They would make you feel that’s your problem, not them,
because you are alone and they are a gang.

Because of the professors listened to what they said,
and I don’t feel like to waste my time to explain to these people,
I start to have wierd classes from professors,
They would start to be sarcastic to what I post and share on Facebook,
Because people stalk my Facebook 
or even they manage to google my blog,
They know about what I wrote, share
and how my life might be by mostly assuming 
after what they see from my social media,
They would start to judge or compare in the class.
It’s irritating but also funny,
Because you don’t need to know who Anne Hathaway is
when your lecturing class is Mandarin linguistic…
Yes, that professor try to prove that she knows about Anne Hathaway,
Coz I post and wrote some stuffs about movies,
And that makes her feel threaten,
So she need to talk about a movie she recently watched.
That time " The Intern" was just release the DVD, 
She thinks this can prove that she watches movies too,
But who doesn’t?

She also has to prove that she know how to dress up,
So she would turn the classroom as her personal fashion show,
She need to claim she’s married coz probably being single is a shame for her,
She need to prove she has a social life and it’s an international one,
Coz she has foreign friends visit her during the weekdays,
Even all these are nothing to do with the class she’s lecturing.

There is  professor would spend the whole class to teach drama,
To prove that she knows something about what I learned for my B.A.,
and need to spend time on discuss 
what’s the best Chinese movie of this year for film award,
Probably because they afraid people would say they don’t watch movies.

Maybe they saw my old pictures on my Facebook,
I was good-looking there but now I'm older and doesn't really look the same.
There is a class that the professor shows a video 
about a good looking guy got old,
and didn’t realize it.
Then spend half of the class to discuss it.

All these quirky classes just make me can’t more agree with what
I read in “ Faculty Incivility”
“ The Academic culture is a breeding ground 
for incivility,bullying and mobbing.”
I don't exactly know what problems do they have that time, 
but I'm sure they are living in a life that lead them to behave like this,
which is funny but irritating.

Well, there are also many good people in academia,
And Ｉ’m lucky to have a good professor to be my advisor.
Especially after reading so many stories from “Faculty Incivility”,
that are about how being a professor can be humiliated, 
tortured mentally and physically.
I’m very appreciate that how my advisor being so selflessly to help me.
And thinking academia isn’t all ruined.

If you are isolated as a graduate student,
always got back stabbing by some people,
you should take some time to read “Faculty Incivitliy”,
you would find that you are not alone.

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