Before I leave you all for the night I wanted to talk about something which I already did a thread on last week over at my account @Rhiannon_Kirton and that is #mentalhealth
This is something that I have struggled with recently (see previous thread) and I know many other grad students have also struggled with. So I want to highlight that you are not alone, many of us share this struggle with you
Grad school is HARD, it is even harder when you are first- gen, BIPOC, LGBTQ+ or from another marginalized background. Often we do not have the resources we need and this is even more true for accessing adequate help for mental health.
I have been fortunate to find amazing friends through science twitter and if you are struggling please know that we are all here to do what we can for you. It is not something to be ashamed of. We're all on this journey together.
and to add to all the other things that might impact mental health, this year has been really really hard and unusual and many of us are grieving. Grieving family lost to COVID (🙋🏾♀️), lost opportunities, delayed plans, missed life events etc. Now more than ever it is so important
That we stick together and help each other and that includes you! Please please reach out to me, to others in the scientific community if you need an ear to listen or a shoulder to cry on or someone to advocate for you! We have your back. You are loved ❤️.
This also goes for imposter syndrome. I promise you that we all feel like we aren't smart enough or strong enough all the time. You may look at the pictures I have shared today and think wow she is so accomplished but I regularly feel like I know 0 things.
You are smart and strong and tech savvy enough to be a scientist! You can do it! Sometimes being a scientist is the beautiful sunsets and the charismatic animals and sometimes it is staring at your code for 5 days wondering how you got here.
You will figure it out and you will make it. Welcome future scientist, you are loved and we want you to succeed.
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2/Our findings suggest that student evaluations of teaching seem to measure *conformity with gendered expectations* rather than teaching quality
A cause for concern given the integration of SET data into performance profiles, and management and organisation of teaching practice
3/Before I go on, in terms of the necessarily binary reporting, it is very important to say here that we recognise the ‘pluralities inherent in gender(s)’ that complicate simple binary approaches to gender (Weerawardhana, 2018, p.189), and we do discuss this in the paper
On important background, in March 2020 the IOC recognised harassment and abuse as a current human rights challenge, and in particular recognised that LGBTQI+ athletes are at “particular risk of harm and structural discrimination”
3/n
The IOC now recognise female eligibility regulation *as an organisational violence issue* and as systemic discrimination
[I'll do another tweet thread on this later, drawing on my own research on this]
I want to address a narrative that we see around women’s sport and inclusion (particularly from those who seek to exclude trans women & women with sex variations from women’s sport), and how this narrative is part of a bigger pattern that functions to keep women small
2/n
I have been hearing more frequently the narrative that women's sport apparently exists as a 'protected category' so that women can win (because, on this account, without it no woman will ever win again)
3/n
This is:
a) *not* the reason why women's sport exists as a category,
and b) it is *not* true that no woman will ever win again.
This narrative is profoundly paternalistic and keeps women small.