Pseudonymous Ramblings by Psychobunny

Update

I exploded today in front of my class with Dr. WTG. We've been doing discussions on a book, and in praising my (male) classmate's discussion questions, he said, "Nice job, Awesome Man. And no attacks, either, unlike Psychobunny. Very nice." (I had criticized the author's writing style and alluded that he was using more poetic license than neurology content.)

I lost it and started asserting myself (one level below shouting), "You know, you get used to attacking things when you're female. You get used to having to be better than everyone else to be considered as good as everyone else!"

Fellow Female Student: "She's right, you know."

Dr. WTG: "Oh, but not in my classes, right?"

Me (sarcastically, of course): "HA! Yeah, right!!!" And I went on to explain everything in my post about him, as the other members of the class went out the back door, mumbling something about there being a radical in the room. One office discussion later, he agreed to monitor his behavior for sexism. And I agreed to try to be less vitriolic. No need to change advisors now, though I wish I hadn't criticized him so harshly in front of the entire class.

Final note: Yes, I guess I am a radical feminist. And no, I cannot conceive of that being a bad thing.

Update to the Update: Darn gossipy academics. The entire psych faculty now knows about my little outburst. You know, they really should offer a class called Keeping Your Darn Mouth Shut. I can picture it now. The class would probably be a psychology class, focused on teaching people how to control gracefully the overt signs of emotion.

I see it meeting three times per week, with the first two to three weeks focused entirely on initial training and a follow-up training session once per week thereafter. It would have a different guest lecturer twice every week as the main part of the course, someone there explicitly to make everyone in the class angry. The main instructor would set criteria for how many displays of anger the students are allowed to show each session.

There would be a related psychology class, titled something like Behavioral Observations where every student registered for it would just have to observe one to three students in the KYDMS class for overt signs of rage (you would want overlap in the observers, of course, for interobserver reliability). You could then base the grade in the KYDMS class on meeting or failing to meet the preset criterion as observed by the BO (heh heh! BO...) class members.

I'd take it. (I think Dr. WTG would force me into it, actually. :) )

posted by Psychobunny at 12:39 PM