Over the years, I've told colleagues and friends about things I have seen or experienced. Many times, people have said that I should write them down so that they won't be lost and forgotten, since some of them might be useful parts of our history. I've been writing them down, without being sure what I would do with them. I decided to gradually post them on this website, and see what reactions I get. I suggest reading from the bottom up (starting with the August 2017 post "The Meritocracy"). Thoughtful and kind feedback would be useful for me, and would help me to revise the exposition to make it as useful as possible. I hope that while you read my stories you will ask yourself "What can I learn from this?" I'm particularly interested in knowing what you see as the point of the story, or what you take away from it. Please send feedback to asilverb@gmail.com. Thanks for taking the time to read and hopefully reflect on them!

I often run the stories past the people I mention, even when they are anonymized, to get their feedback and give them a chance to correct the record or ask for changes. When they tell me they're happy to be named, I sometimes do so. When I give letters as pseudonyms, there is no correlation between those letters and the names of the real people.

Monday, September 24, 2018

Outtake #1: When something goes wrong

My next few posts will be "outtakes" from earlier drafts of my September 16, 2018 piece. See especially my commentary under the following outtake.

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There are things I should learn to do better. One is to choose my battles, or at least figure out sooner when the battle is lost. If you look up the management chain and see no one who can be counted on to do the right thing, then your only options might be the unpalatable ones of getting a lawyer, going to the media, or getting out. When the stress of unfair treatment makes you ill, it's probably time to get out. Your health is your highest priority.
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The above was intended as advice for students. But I've told a variant of this advice to administrators (who would rather that I hadn't), and it's especially important for them. To administrators and managers (in all professions), the message is:

People need to know where to go to get problems fixed. If the problem is more likely to be solved by going to a lawyer or the media than by any option you offer, then some people will do so. If you don't want that, you need to provide better options, that can be trusted to make things better rather than worse.