Observations of a recent "budding romance" in the lab have led me to the conclusion that there is something fundamentally different between wooing in academia and other professional settings such as industry. There is much more overt sex talk in labs between graduate students. Though some of this may be a direct function of the age of the workers (and their lack of familiarity with sexual harassment training and lawsuits), I think there is something intrinsically casual about the academic workplace. Despite being paid to work, graduate students (and many postdocs) are essentially just continuing their already very long stint "in school." This means a lot of the casual aspects of school - dress, mannerisms, conversation topics - carry over.
My husband tells me that the same is true of topics other than sex, eg, religion and politics. There isn't nearly as much talk of anything contentious in typical workplaces.
Clearly, academia is not your typical workplace.
5 weeks ago
Reminds me of this Hugh Macleod cartoon. We may have left the student universe, but we still behave like one.
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So true. I think it's because it's not a traditional work place, in many ways you are peers and could be friends. Sometimes I miss the banter fellow student workers and I would participate in, but other times I am satisfied to be bathed in the politically correct shadow of corporate america. If you were all young, inquisitive students with open minds and open hearts than keeping the dialogue informal was great. But if there is someone who takes advantage of that to further their own racist or sexist views it can make the whole place miserable.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. There are certainly some very fun aspects to being able to discuss "non-PC" things such as worldview or religion openly. Intellectual debates are our bread and butter after all. But FrauTech you're also right that some people abuse this openness (eg, see my August post about sexy talk from a professor... ack!). My husband says he has seen similar inappropriateness from the highest levels of management at his firm, but it seems generally less common in the "real" world compared to academia.
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