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Facutly Behaving Badly

Facutly Behaving Badly

The other night I (doctoral student) was asked to go to a reception for prospective doctoral students in our program, to mingle and answer questions. Some faculty were also at the reception. A very professional-looking, together prospective student sought me out because she had questions about my advisor and the specific topic I study. We were in the middle of a pretty detailed conversation when a faculty member came over, introduced herself, and began trying to convince both of us to choose the program (that Im currently in). The faculty-member didnt realize I was a current student, and kept contradicting things I was saying. I would say, "well, one challenge youll face is that we dont offer coursework on xyz" and the faculty member would say, "oh no, we have some great offerings in xyz".

The faculty-member is from a completely different part of the field, knew nothing about the specifics of what the prospective and I were talking about, and was wrong, but seeing as she thought I was only a prospective student, there was no way she was going to let me knock the program. I kept trying to the let the faculty member know I was a current student, but she wasnt paying any attention, and didnt get it for like ten minutes. The prospective, meanwhile, kept raising her eyebrows at me as if to say, "WTF?" and "Why wont this weird lady in irrelevant-subfield leave us alone so we can get back to talking about the questions I have?".

The kicker is that the clueless faculty-member and I served on a committee together last year, but she didnt recognize me because she ditched all but one of the committee meetings.

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