A few months ago I participated in an engineering experiment. I found out I was partially color blind. I had to change into spandex so my movements could be monitored. I was getting paid $20 an hour.
The experiment was being conducted by fellow graduate students. They made me feel like shit. They talked around me instead of to me. One rather feminine fellow kept telling me "You're doing a good job," like I was three years old. I wasn't a colleague. I wasn't a student. I wasn't anything to them.
It was the worse ostracized feeling I have felt in a long time. I wanted to be friends with them. I wanted to talk politics. I wanted to participate in their intellectual banter. I wanted to discuss experimental protocol with them. I usually do not give a damn about most people. But these people, because they were acting like I was some stupid subject only to be observed, intrigued me.
Maybe it was because they were engineering people. Maybe it was me. I don't know.
But when they finally paid me, which took three extra days, I felt a whole lot better.
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3 comments:
I was re-reading McCloskey's book The Writing of Economics. He says that too often academics resort to 'the scientist' persona when writing. It sounds like the people running your experiments did the same thing. I think it is a poor basis for interacting with people regardless of the medium.
I just read an interesting article by McCloskey on graduate education too. Every day I become more and more committed to her idea that we (economists, social thinkers, philosophers, whatever, humans) are debaters around table. It is just a matter of choosing our tables.
Part of the problem with the experimenters were they were clueless. I could handle disinterested scientists, but they were talking amongst themselves about non-experiment things. It was just a weird situation.
I have always hated senses of superiority, but this was the first time since high school that I really felt it.
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