This resembles my time observing academia so ruthlessly, as an undergrad and grad student and then as an outsider.
After the first year, students of my college “have practice” in a nature reserve. We go to live in a research base / summer camp hybrid thing for about 40 days unless one works double shifts. (There are four study courses, and the reasonable people join one study group in the morning and another in the afternoon. The unreasonable get to live wild, sometimes for the first time ever. I was unreasonable.) And of course, the teachers are the same every year, since this is supposed to be an opportunity to show us true botanical and zoological fieldwork. (The fieldwork part is great.)
But the living wild sucks. When I got to my assigned room on that first evening, another student was already having Active Personal Life going on, so I left. It did not occur to me to try a teacher. I complained to my boyfriend, who was a blooming adult at his 18 y.o., and he found me a place to stay for the night—another girl let me to share her bed :) crap, we were so afraid A Teacher Would Notice. The next day, after a round of negotiations, my bed was squeezed into a strictly No-Personal-Life-Allowed room.
And everybody knows this happens but pretends it doesn’t. And the teachers speak about “the practice time” so cheerfully, “I really feel young again!” etc. I remember thinking “oh, you child, how could I ever go to you about my mother being in a hospital”. (I didn’t. My mother did become sick. I went to consult my boyfriend, who advised me to finish studying and promised to loan money for the trip home if there was urgent need, and that was that.)
Can you elaborate on this a bit? I’m sorry to hear that you had a bad experience during fieldwork, though I’m afraid I’m not certain what you refer to by ‘Active Personal Life’. Can you explain how the experience you relate connects to the LCS hierarchy?
If that’s your motivation why did you ask to elaborate? If someone choses words to not go into detail, asking them to provide more detail is generally a reliable way to make things more awkward for them.
Well, he successfully got someone other than the OP (me) to answer, thus deflecting any potential embarrassment or recrimination off of himself. I, meanwhile, don’t actually care if I somehow made things awkward for the OP, so we’ve engaged in a mutually beneficial arbitrage of social liabilities!
The request for elaboration concerned how the experience described related to the LCS hierarchy described in the post, which was (and remains) very unclear to me.
It’s alright, it was not during fieldwork, just after hours. It wasn’t even bad. Two people were on their way to have sex and I decided not to have to leave the room whenever my neighbor was in the mood.
Quite a few students use this time to have sex. (I know a pair who got married that way.) Officially, it’s not happening, I guess because students’ parents would disapprove. The problems start when, say, a drunk teacher hits on a student and everybody becomes afraid that this will lead to investigations and the practice will be cancelled forever.* So it’s in everybody’s interests to pretend things are under control.
Back then it was unthinkable for me to just come up to an adult and ask to be assigned to a different room. I was a prude and proud of it, I knew my complaint was just a matter of preferences and if I went through with it the lovers would be punished, and the teachers all seemed so determinedly cheerful. There was no actual reason to involve them.
But then my mother became sick. And if I were a mature human being, I’d go to the Head and say I needed several days off. But I already knew problems get resolved without the Head.
Then there are, of course, occasional tragedies like students falling out of windows and dying. Or dying in car accidents during practice time. The teachers have no power to prevent this, but they will be held responsible. Whenever something like this happens, people start talking about how the practice is too dangerous and completely unnecessary for most future biologists who won’t even work in the field, and how expensive it is for the university.
(The word I heard used was not “clueless”, but “беспечальный”, which encompasses “carefree”, “untroubled” and “sorrowless”. I like “sorrowless” but it’s got too much of a bite.)
This resembles my time observing academia so ruthlessly, as an undergrad and grad student and then as an outsider.
After the first year, students of my college “have practice” in a nature reserve. We go to live in a research base / summer camp hybrid thing for about 40 days unless one works double shifts. (There are four study courses, and the reasonable people join one study group in the morning and another in the afternoon. The unreasonable get to live wild, sometimes for the first time ever. I was unreasonable.) And of course, the teachers are the same every year, since this is supposed to be an opportunity to show us true botanical and zoological fieldwork. (The fieldwork part is great.)
But the living wild sucks. When I got to my assigned room on that first evening, another student was already having Active Personal Life going on, so I left. It did not occur to me to try a teacher. I complained to my boyfriend, who was a blooming adult at his 18 y.o., and he found me a place to stay for the night—another girl let me to share her bed :) crap, we were so afraid A Teacher Would Notice. The next day, after a round of negotiations, my bed was squeezed into a strictly No-Personal-Life-Allowed room.
And everybody knows this happens but pretends it doesn’t. And the teachers speak about “the practice time” so cheerfully, “I really feel young again!” etc. I remember thinking “oh, you child, how could I ever go to you about my mother being in a hospital”. (I didn’t. My mother did become sick. I went to consult my boyfriend, who advised me to finish studying and promised to loan money for the trip home if there was urgent need, and that was that.)
Can you elaborate on this a bit? I’m sorry to hear that you had a bad experience during fieldwork, though I’m afraid I’m not certain what you refer to by ‘Active Personal Life’. Can you explain how the experience you relate connects to the LCS hierarchy?
“Active Personal Life” = sex. Unless I’ve wildly misunderstood the OP.
Thanks! I thought it might be, but was unsure, and didn’t want to make an awkward situation for the OP in case it was something very different...
If that’s your motivation why did you ask to elaborate? If someone choses words to not go into detail, asking them to provide more detail is generally a reliable way to make things more awkward for them.
Well, he successfully got someone other than the OP (me) to answer, thus deflecting any potential embarrassment or recrimination off of himself. I, meanwhile, don’t actually care if I somehow made things awkward for the OP, so we’ve engaged in a mutually beneficial arbitrage of social liabilities!
The request for elaboration concerned how the experience described related to the LCS hierarchy described in the post, which was (and remains) very unclear to me.
It’s alright, it was not during fieldwork, just after hours. It wasn’t even bad. Two people were on their way to have sex and I decided not to have to leave the room whenever my neighbor was in the mood.
Quite a few students use this time to have sex. (I know a pair who got married that way.) Officially, it’s not happening, I guess because students’ parents would disapprove. The problems start when, say, a drunk teacher hits on a student and everybody becomes afraid that this will lead to investigations and the practice will be cancelled forever.* So it’s in everybody’s interests to pretend things are under control.
Back then it was unthinkable for me to just come up to an adult and ask to be assigned to a different room. I was a prude and proud of it, I knew my complaint was just a matter of preferences and if I went through with it the lovers would be punished, and the teachers all seemed so determinedly cheerful. There was no actual reason to involve them.
But then my mother became sick. And if I were a mature human being, I’d go to the Head and say I needed several days off. But I already knew problems get resolved without the Head.
Then there are, of course, occasional tragedies like students falling out of windows and dying. Or dying in car accidents during practice time. The teachers have no power to prevent this, but they will be held responsible. Whenever something like this happens, people start talking about how the practice is too dangerous and completely unnecessary for most future biologists who won’t even work in the field, and how expensive it is for the university.
(The word I heard used was not “clueless”, but “беспечальный”, which encompasses “carefree”, “untroubled” and “sorrowless”. I like “sorrowless” but it’s got too much of a bite.)