Quote:
Originally Posted by lizardlady
Instead of not attending the meetings is there something you could do about whatever is triggering you at the meetings?
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I'm not entirely sure. What's being triggered are feelings of failure and ostracization. The second one in particular is coming from emotional wounds from my childhood up to this point in my life. If I were to bring up any of these feelings, I would most likely be invalidated (as I am often) and/or people will simply not understand what I'm trying to communicate which will make me feel even more ostracized. So I'm a bit stumped as to what would help other than not being present (whether physically or mentally).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Talthybius
I could give a normal response describing my experience with department meetings in our chair group. I always think they are a lot of fun and are a nice breakup of usual work. And often some interesting science is discussed.
But this seems like a serious mental health issue for you. I'd say try to work out something talking with your therapist, then with your supervisor.
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The way you describe it is the way it's supposed to be, but due to the environment at the school and my sensitivity to ostracization, it's not the positive environment it's supposed to be. The school tends to make it clear which ones of us are important and which ones of us don't matter at all. The departmental meetings often devolve into what feels like bragging about their own professional achievements without really opening a discussion of how others can pursue the same sorts of opportunities. That's not always the case, but it is too often. Then those of us who haven't had those opportunities feel like complete failures...especially when it's an underclassman who's doing something that one of us graduate students has wanted to do for a decade or so. It doesn't feel like we can get help from others and that others would ever accept our help. So there's this strong feelings of not belonging.
And unfortunately, I'm also required to prepare a 50 minute lecture for one of the meetings, so that's extra work I probably won't have a lot of time to do. So that's stressful. It really should just be discussions and sharing our work and being supportive of each other.
ETA:
The new professor that started this year (and is head of just our department of 20 some people) can also be condescending. He really likes trying to keep asking questions until he catches you not knowing an answer and then you feel humiliated in front of your peers. So when you give a presentation or lead a discussion, you are made to feel stupid and inept. So I'm not sure what I'll do the presentation on. If I'm not the preeminent world scholar on the subject or he doesn't feel that he is (and he thinks he knows EVERYTHING
), then I would feel "too stupid" to talk about it.