- assume nothing can go wrong at this point.
- address the female graduate students as, "Yo! Bitches!"
- fill your plate with so many sandwiches that there is nothing but chips and pickles left for the students still in their face-to-faces.
- tell sexist and off-color jokes to the female graduate students, even after they tell you that you are making them feel uncomfortable.
- call the female graduate students "Bitches" a second time.
- confess that you really screwed up your last interview by behaving inappropriately.
- (updated!) tell graduate students their work is boring and no one is interested in it.
- (updated!) tell international graduate students that their country is stupid and that everyone who comes from that country is stupid.
Good luck on your other interviews.
38 comments:
Man, that is going to be very difficult advice to follow, but I'll try to remember somehow.
Yeesh. Kids these days.
DAMN! That was what went wrong! It was the second time I called them Bitches!
(under my breath) i have to remember that...
Holy cow. That's, um, that's, um, wow. There are no words.
Bozos will out.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer twit.
Seriously, is it ever appropriate to address women one does not know as "bitches" - ever? I see this as a sign that this guy should NOT go to grad school!
whoa
really?!
I find it so hilariously just that the letter writers were called. I mean, I'm sure he acts like this at his "home" institution?
wow..... thats.... I have no words. It is a bit unusual would you not say?
I wonder what his/hers letter writers said when you called?!?! We knew or what?
Sucks to be him. We had a guy one time go around touching all the women. Um.. dude, get your hands off me. Oh, even some of the female faculty. He too, did not get funding.
I know that a lot of people in academia are somewhat socially inept, but this really takes the cake. Who in the hell uses the term "bitches" in a quasi-professional setting?! Overeating? This guy seems incredibly cocky, and for no apparent good reason. I think your department dodged a huge bullet there (not to mention the inevitable harassment suits from his female colleagues).
self sabotage.
some people don't want to succeed, but they want others to be the one to tell them no. maybe he wants to be able to blame everyone else, a la "they wouldn't let me in, its their fault"
Wow, I bet he won't understand why the bridges are burned.
Must have gotten lost on his way to the MBA interviews.
*boggle*
From my limited experience as a former grad student in social sciences, I might add:
-Don't wear capri pants if you're a man, and you probably should reconsider it if you're a woman. Actually, regardless of sex/gender, don't wear capri pants to an interview...or ever, really. They're ugly and impractical.
-Never pull tampons out of your purse in full view of the entire department. Save that for when you are behind closed doors.
-Avoid telling stories of your undergrad experience that begin with, "One night, I was so wasted..."
-Pretend to pay attention when tenured faculty are talking, even if they're telling boring stories. Blatant yawning and lack of eye contact will get you nowhere.
I've seen some horrors.
Oh. My. God.
Clearly, this person has a future in politics, rather than academics.
Actually, scratch that. They may have a future in administration.
There are complete assholes, and then there are bipolar mild assholes having manic episodes. I've seen both at interviews, although I didn't always recognize it at the time.
Without more information it's hard to tell which category this guy falls into. As is, I'd give it about 50-50.
I--umm--WTF?
Reminds me of some of my little 13th grade boys in Comp I. Good God.
He'll probably be in touch with David Horowitz pretty soon claiming all those damn liberal hippies in academia blacklisted him for his conservative views.
Are you sure your department wasn't being punk'd by Ashton Kutcher and crew? This guy sounds like a piece of work...
[at the same time, may I add to the list: do not get drunk at the social and start hitting on the wife of the department chair. That happened here at last year's recruitment.]
adolesence in some guys run into their 40's and beyond (not necessarily a voice of experience)
This makes me wish we interviewed the little darlings prior to making financial aid decisions. There were some definite regrets at our recruitment weekend this year and we ended up doing everything we could to dissuade a particularly noxious one from coming here. Only problem is, his other two choices are probably doing the same thing. Bless his heart.
( .)(. )
Wait... I *thought* I wanted to work with grad students... My delicate undergrads wanting excused absences to rest up for the lacrosse game are looking really good right now.
I really, really hope this guy was an outlier.
I had the pleasure of hosting some prospective graduate students this semester: one torpedoed the interviews because (and I quote) "I only applied here to get my dad off my back - no way in hell am I coming here" (FYI: genius only applied to 2 schools); another went to a faculty dinner and baited the faculty host: "why should I come here? I want to go to Harvard." A cherished third refused to speak to and interact with his host once he discovered that his host belonged to a "devil religion" - and this is someone who wants to stay in academia all his life.
I always kinda figured you don't burn bridges until AFTER you have an alternate arranged.
Yet another piece of advice: at the "student's only" night on the town after all the interviews, do not pick a fight with a local, get arrested, and ask the program coordinator to bail your ass out of jail. Yes this happened.
One wonders if this will be this individual's wake-up call.
(doubt it!)
I had a similar experience when visiting a grad school I was admitted to, but it was one of my grad student hosts who was behaving in that way. Completely turned me off an otherwise excellent school. (Highlight: when he saw that his treatment of women was making me uncomfortable, and that I was unimpressed with his stories of how hungover he was the previous weekend, he turned to the guy next to him and said "what's with him? it's like he's a little kid! so immature!")
--onymous
Be glad it happened during the interview and not a week after the student enrolled with a full fellowship.
Bet you a dollar this person ends up on Fox news, complaining about how the Liberal Thought Police Blacklisted Him. ;-)
How could a person like this even manage to put together an application? Was there nothing on the application that gave the faculty (our present hostess excepted) a clue that there might be a problem?
(sigh) And yet the rest of us little worker bees quietly buzzing around the academic hive, trying to do our work and eventually get a decent job at no-name community college if we're lucky, have been pushed out by this loser (and others like him, as evidenced by the comments here). Life ain't fair, for sure.
MJ
Also, don't fall asleep within minutes in every single meeting.
In the course of completing two graduate programs I've been lucky enough not to encounter anyone remotely like the students you describe. Granted, at least this fellow (I assume) has been rejected.
The behavior of one of our short-listed faculty candidates exhibited several of the same behaviors during or interviews last year. Interestingly, he was the best candidate on paper. Needless to say, he was not offered the job - but did get a tenure-track position elsewhere shortly after. Lucky them!
Faculty Wife here, chiming in with a story about a grad student who told the division chair that he viewed his post-graduate degree as a "union card" and felt he'd put in enough time to get it.
I actually witnessed this same fellow's social behavior once at a reception celebrating a program donor. The mayor's wife attended briefly, between other social engagements. As she said her farewells, he told her to make sure she "checked out the chow" - indicating the buffet. When she demurred, he told her she could always "take a bowzer bag" as she left.
Klass.
I think that guy is in my grad program. I'm not sure which makes me angrier, the fact that I have to see him daily, or the fact that the department funds him.
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