At 09:56 AM 9/4/01 -0700, Mike Cole wrote:
>
>Alena-- A agree with almost all your comments re Tannen and Bruce's note,
>but there is one point I do not agree with. It is the following:
>
>
>I'm just a graduate student, with fewer years in academia than many on
>this list and less authority to talk about "us"
>
>Any member of this group who contributes to the discussion has as much
>right and authority to talk about "us" as any other. The importatation
>of academic rank into this medium simply isn't helpful. Almost none
>of us have ANY direct power over any of the others of us and all of us
>are well versed/experienced with respect to relevant knowledge that others
>know little of.
>
>Don Cunningham's note earlier this morning (I am slow at getting to my
>email, or through it today) points us toward things he at least knows
>SOMETHING about (and in some cases a LOT about) that I know nothing
>about.
>
>Thanks a lot for your contribution. But don't feel you need to reduce your
>own voice owing to factors of ascribed status. Achieving status here depends
>on what you do here, and what you have done is contribute helpfully to
>a difficult discussion.
>mike
Yes, I suppose it did sound like reducing my voice, but I really did want
to say
that I have less experience of academia than many, and maybe I am grabbing
onto Tannen's piece because it strikes such a note with me because maybe I
haven't had all that long to learn to live with an agonistic environment
and grow,
perhaps, inured to it. How strident I've become! And in so little time.
It worries
me what would happen to my spirit to live so long in such an environment.
I guess
the replies to the list reveal a lot about the ways people survive with
agonism, much of
the revelation going on between the lines. I found it very instructive.
And while I'm on the subject of "my voice": I'm finding myself blinking at
the
switch in timescales, now that I have ventured beyond lurkerdom. I was
overcome
with frustration and vented it far faster (gosh, within a couple of days,
most of them
holidays here in the States!) than even my worst non-cyberspace impatience
would
have predicted. I am just afraid that my bumbling in cyber-time may have
offended,
and that would be justified. So here I do want to plead novice status as I
offer
apologies if my impatience cut short people's musings on what Mike rightly
notes is a difficult subject.
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