ATTN: Female Colleagues New to Grad School
This is directed to my female colleagues, new to grad school, and have a male advisor. I write this for you to learn from my experience/ignorance, so that you may have the wisdom to navigate. And for those that may not fall under this category, please do not disregard. As a friend, family member, or an acquaintance to a woman in academia, this is a great way to check in with the female academics in your life to best support them. You may not understand everything they encounter but this is a start. My experience does not run the gamut of instances that female grad students fall prey to in grad school, but my experience is more common than one would think.
This “survival guide” is addressing my female colleagues out there; perhaps college is not too far in your rearview mirror, and you’re wide eyed and ready to take on grad school. Congratulations! You have embarked on a HUGE undertaking and should be proud.
The purpose of this entry is not to be a source of disenchantment for grad school, but to alert you; to caution you to be sharp in interactions with faculty within your department — especially your advisor. And if your advisor is a male, you need to be doubly alert. Based on experience, grad school is the perfect place to be what Jesus says to be — as shrewd as a serpent and as gentle as a dove (Matthew 10:16).
Given the urgency of this matter and the frequency of male advisors making advances on their female students, I take the liberty of a pithy approach. Articles unfortunately suggest a shocking rate of sexual harassment/advancement on female students. Heartbreakingly enough, these occurrences go terribly underreported due to a number of reasons: the survivor’s fear of not being taken seriously; terror of reliving the moment(s); unsatisfying repercussions enforced on the survivor’s behalf to protect them. There also exists a dangerous culture of victim blaming, so as to protect themselves they remain silent. I was among the silent.
[As an aside: The substantive studies I have looked up to try and convey statistics of sexual harassment/advancement against women in grad school are so sparse, that I had to depend on undergraduate statistics to siphon some semblance of gravity to this situation. As a way to get you started on this journey of knowledge of the collegiate realm — and hopefully academia, click here to view this article. Now this is just one article — needless to say that it is the responsibility of the reader to look into it to uncover this sobering reality.]
The following points I communicate to bring to the surface what can happen or things that have happened to me. As I have mentioned much earlier, they do not touch on everything because I am limited to my experience. These are, however, practical pointers to employ for your protection. I pray for wisdom for you to apply this knowledge accordingly and intentionally.
So without further ado:
Create boundaries for direct communication. Generally this is the responsibility of your advisor, however, you too have agency in situations such as these. When you receive an email, do not feel the need to answer right away. (And I say email because that should be the principal mode of communication. If they are to have your personal number, there must be a very good reason such as you being their TA.) It would be best to keep communication within regular business hours (9am-6pm). Anything received late in the evening is not urgent enough to be answered within the hour. (If they have an emergency they do not need you to solve it — trust me.) Answer the next day. If you receive the email on Saturday or Sunday, reply on Monday at 9am unless of course the situation is time sensitive or there is a special circumstance such as recommendation writing, grant writing, fellowship applications, or anything having a hard deadline where communicating outside of business hours could not be avoided. In that case, keep the communication to email.
Meeting environment should be appropriate. Make sure that when you meet your advisor, it’s usually in his office with the door open. If the door is closed and you two are alone, be sure that it is not closed for a prolonged period of time — no more than 30 minutes. For the most part, the door should remain ajar. If it cannot be discussed with the door open, it should not be discussed at all. Keep the conversation topical and relevant to the material/work at hand. (For meeting times refer to #1 for suggested hours).
Avoid speaking on personal matters with your advisor. I advise against speaking sensitive matters with your male advisor: any details of relationship/marital issues should not be topics of discussion. Unless they are family, they do not and should not get that access to you.
Do not have drinks with your advisor alone. So I know I alluded to “environment” with point #2, but this area is so pressing I had to approach at another angle. If your advisor wants to treat you to lunch or dinner, do not allow drinks to be in the mix. As a matter of fact, having dinner alone is somewhat questionable. Keep it to lunch. Drinks have a way of getting anyone loose and unguarded and no human being is immune to that. If you aren’t careful, you will get yourself in eventual compromising situations.
More on this: just meet on campus all the time. It’s safer this way. I started having drinks with my advisor while I was still his student, so by the time I graduated it was already a norm and that led to deeper matters.
Create a community within and without the department. Make sure you have a faculty member that you believe you can trust (even if it’s in another department) and people outside of grad school that you can have frequent check ins with. Being in constant communication with your community can help them see what you probably are not seeing. It helps to have community within academia because they can shed light on the academic perspective. The ones outside can help with more of the relational perspective.
Do not ignore your gut. If you have a habit of betraying yourself or ignoring your gut, you establish a relationship with yourself of going against your better judgement. As a result you witness yourself in jeopardizing situations that your gut was warning you against long before they ever occurred. If you feel that the situation is making you feel increasingly uncomfortable, listen to your gut and talk to someone you trust. Get their insight and they can help you come to a solution that brings you peace.
Paper trails are your best friend. Paper trails are key. Emails and/or text messages make for an effective record keeper and serve as protection.
Network. Networking not only will help you expand your academic base of people within your field, but it allows for you to develop relationships with people that can help you navigate grad school as well. The best forums for networking are conferences. You will understand quickly it’s a large (but small) community of people possessing an overlap in experiences. This also diffuses the sense of “power” you may believe that your advisor may have over you because they are not your only source/resource thereby de-godding them in your mind. This does not mean to disrespect them, this is to say that no one person is (or should ever be) your source.
I understand that this does not take into account that you can truly develop a deep sense of camaraderie between you and your advisor. If the relationship is founded on respect, trust, and work, you can be lenient on some hard boundaries after a genuine consideration is established. I have grown to understand no matter how relationally close you get with your advisor or how much trust is built, if a power dynamic is what brought you as pair together, that hierarchy will always be assumed regardless of whether or not you are their direct student.
A sense of reverence for your advisor is present because you trust that they would guide you. After I graduated, the waters were muddied; and being invited into his personal world blurred the lines between us. It took me a while to understand what was going on between my advisor and I. Until this very moment, it’s hard to acknowledge that what happened was intentional. I say it was intentional because a person in a position of power is no spring chicken to grad school/academia. But I was — which meant I was impressionable.
I learned valuable lessons in grad school that was not all bad; perhaps in another entry I might expand — definitely not guaranteed. This entry was heavy enough to write because it required me to revisit and remember old feelings, situations, instances, conversations, actions, and dark moments that I had no intention of revisiting or remembering any time soon. Even as I write this, I’m battling thoughts and feelings that want to pull me back in to a head space that I know in my heart of hearts does not reflect where I truly am.
I do understand that baring your not-so-honorable moments before others gives them an opportunity to pass judgement. That’s okay. You are reserved that right. I know who I am and whose I am. I am free from that. Even as the woman I was back then, I give myself grace in that I truly didn’t know any better. And that also is okay.
The Bible says in Revelation 12:11 “And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death” (NASB — emphasis added). All that to say: I knew the risk I took in writing this.
If it was for me, this would be an area that I would prefer to keep to myself because of fear; but I also know that fear will not run my life; God has not given me a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, of love, and of a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). So in the same spirit of love that invades in my heart, fear no longer has room to take residence there. My love for God first and my sisters second is the reason that I share this; the perfect love (of God) that casts out fear and emboldens me to share this part of my story.
Although I would have loved to learn these lessons differently, I am confident that this was the best way for the lessons to stick in my brain and empower others. As I still work through the muscle memory of that time in my life day by day I lean on my hope and strength that’s in Christ. That’s honestly what got me through this: Christ, therapy, and community. In that order.
Signed, Dani J.
