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I Scared Them Off
Feb. 24th, 2022 06:04 pmMet a math professor while walking to a student club last Friday.
"Are you going to the philosophy club?" He asked. I said I didn't know that it was a philosophy club, but it was where I was going. The topic was "information" and how to get it. I never did get the chance to make any "Prisoner" references.
When we went there, the student leading the discussion read the "mission statement" for the club, which I'd heard at a previous meeting. I thought it odd that they read a mission statement. I don't think any club I was ever involved with in college even had a mission statement. Of course, I went to college at a place and time where most of the clubs met in bars (and sometimes ended up in clubs). This mission statement has a strange phrase in it, "we all all equal here, we leave our titles at the door." On the previous occasion I was there, the club commissar --or CEO or whatever he is that his club has a mission statement-- mentioned that it was written to put students at ease because they were sometimes reticent to engage with their professors.
I had gleaned from the newsletter that this particular meeting was organized around the idea of information and how to get it. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the information they were interested learning how to find was information on abortion, racism, and teaching history.
And strangely, that meant that the conversation went off on a tangent almost immediately.
After holding back for a while, I started trying to ask questions of the students to get thing back on track, back towards how to gather the information the students should be looking for to discuss a question on this topic. The mathematician wasn't saying much, but he's a mathematician and even more introverted than I am.*
And then the first of the twins** came in.
I didn't know her. I wasn't really sure if she was a student or not. She looked a little old for a student, but not old enough to date. And immediately, she started lecturing. "You have to be careful with these conversations..." it became clear she was a professor. I tried to get the conversation back on track once or twice, and almost got the students talking again, but the second twin came in. This one I knew and disliked from meetings, and she teaches a class immediately after mine in the same room three days a week. She's a talker, just like the other twin proved to be. And of course the last person you want in a meeting is someone who presents a stream of inclinations as thoughts, at least if you want a chance to grab lunch.
The twins then started to trade soliloquies. They may have riffed a little on the previous five minute monologue, but it wasn't a conversation. It was a tag team lecture. They were hectoring the students on what they "had to do" in order to talk about the topic. Who are the right scholars to talk about abortion and racism? [None] What should the tone be? [Nasal] Not topics for students to discuss among themselves. "These issues are too big for you." Topics to be imposed by twenty-eight year-old high priestesses.
The mathematician tried to throw in a suggestion somewhere, but it disappeared into the linguistic aether.
I was bored. I took the first opportunity to leave, and when I got up the mathematician got up with me.
We did talk mildly on the way back to the office (our offices are in the same hall). We agreed the students were doing pretty well until the meeting was hijacked. He thought that most of what the twins were suggesting could be accomplished just by choosing something to read instead of a topic. I thought the twins needed to go to great books discussion leader training to learn to ask questions rather than pontificating all the time.
The CEO came in a little after we left, he said, and the twins were discussing whether we (the mathematician and I) had been offended by the reading of the mission statement. And they continued talking for two and a half hours. The strange thing is, the twins showed me why the mission statement was read, they showed me why it had such a strange phrase, and they showed me that the phrasing was far too weak. Student clubs are for students.
I haven't seen the second twin all week, although she usually gets to her class early. I'm hoping that I scared her off.
This week, I didn't get the newsletter.(*4)
______________________
* While visiting a lab in NYC one summer, a graduate student introduced me to his girlfriend by saying "F. is an extrovert, he's always talking to people about what they're doing." I told this to some friends when I got back to NOLA, and they couldn't drink their beers through their laughter for the next five minutes.
** Obviously, they aren't twins. That would be hot.(*3) Instead, they're both eerily similar human beings. Upper middle class mid-westerners, $50k+ private schools as undergrads (English, History), big state schools for grad school, and under 30. But, their personalities put them squarely in the Future Karens of America club.(*5) Very exclusive.
(*3) The twins at the coffee shop are really very hot. And their names are alliterative. Even hotter.
(*4) No one did. 24 hr+ internet outage on campus. The topic seems to have changed to rhetoric from abortion.
(*5) That didn't keep the twins from ogling me the whole time. I don't know if it's because they thought I was offended or just my enticing, manly musk that paradoxically attracts women who hate men, or ar least who hold Ph.D.'s (same thing?).
"Are you going to the philosophy club?" He asked. I said I didn't know that it was a philosophy club, but it was where I was going. The topic was "information" and how to get it. I never did get the chance to make any "Prisoner" references.
When we went there, the student leading the discussion read the "mission statement" for the club, which I'd heard at a previous meeting. I thought it odd that they read a mission statement. I don't think any club I was ever involved with in college even had a mission statement. Of course, I went to college at a place and time where most of the clubs met in bars (and sometimes ended up in clubs). This mission statement has a strange phrase in it, "we all all equal here, we leave our titles at the door." On the previous occasion I was there, the club commissar --or CEO or whatever he is that his club has a mission statement-- mentioned that it was written to put students at ease because they were sometimes reticent to engage with their professors.
I had gleaned from the newsletter that this particular meeting was organized around the idea of information and how to get it. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the information they were interested learning how to find was information on abortion, racism, and teaching history.
And strangely, that meant that the conversation went off on a tangent almost immediately.
After holding back for a while, I started trying to ask questions of the students to get thing back on track, back towards how to gather the information the students should be looking for to discuss a question on this topic. The mathematician wasn't saying much, but he's a mathematician and even more introverted than I am.*
And then the first of the twins** came in.
I didn't know her. I wasn't really sure if she was a student or not. She looked a little old for a student, but not old enough to date. And immediately, she started lecturing. "You have to be careful with these conversations..." it became clear she was a professor. I tried to get the conversation back on track once or twice, and almost got the students talking again, but the second twin came in. This one I knew and disliked from meetings, and she teaches a class immediately after mine in the same room three days a week. She's a talker, just like the other twin proved to be. And of course the last person you want in a meeting is someone who presents a stream of inclinations as thoughts, at least if you want a chance to grab lunch.
The twins then started to trade soliloquies. They may have riffed a little on the previous five minute monologue, but it wasn't a conversation. It was a tag team lecture. They were hectoring the students on what they "had to do" in order to talk about the topic. Who are the right scholars to talk about abortion and racism? [None] What should the tone be? [Nasal] Not topics for students to discuss among themselves. "These issues are too big for you." Topics to be imposed by twenty-eight year-old high priestesses.
The mathematician tried to throw in a suggestion somewhere, but it disappeared into the linguistic aether.
I was bored. I took the first opportunity to leave, and when I got up the mathematician got up with me.
We did talk mildly on the way back to the office (our offices are in the same hall). We agreed the students were doing pretty well until the meeting was hijacked. He thought that most of what the twins were suggesting could be accomplished just by choosing something to read instead of a topic. I thought the twins needed to go to great books discussion leader training to learn to ask questions rather than pontificating all the time.
The CEO came in a little after we left, he said, and the twins were discussing whether we (the mathematician and I) had been offended by the reading of the mission statement. And they continued talking for two and a half hours. The strange thing is, the twins showed me why the mission statement was read, they showed me why it had such a strange phrase, and they showed me that the phrasing was far too weak. Student clubs are for students.
I haven't seen the second twin all week, although she usually gets to her class early. I'm hoping that I scared her off.
______________________
* While visiting a lab in NYC one summer, a graduate student introduced me to his girlfriend by saying "F. is an extrovert, he's always talking to people about what they're doing." I told this to some friends when I got back to NOLA, and they couldn't drink their beers through their laughter for the next five minutes.
** Obviously, they aren't twins. That would be hot.(*3) Instead, they're both eerily similar human beings. Upper middle class mid-westerners, $50k+ private schools as undergrads (English, History), big state schools for grad school, and under 30. But, their personalities put them squarely in the Future Karens of America club.(*5) Very exclusive.
(*3) The twins at the coffee shop are really very hot. And their names are alliterative. Even hotter.
(*4) No one did. 24 hr+ internet outage on campus. The topic seems to have changed to rhetoric from abortion.
(*5) That didn't keep the twins from ogling me the whole time. I don't know if it's because they thought I was offended or just my enticing, manly musk that paradoxically attracts women who hate men, or ar least who hold Ph.D.'s (same thing?).
