Today’s Social Miscue comes from the first year of graduate school. I was a know-it-all 22-year old. I had studied my subject (history) with dedication since I was 12, and was passionate about facts, dates, places etc. It certainly qualified as a “special interest”. I had entered grad school in the hopes of becoming a professional historian. I was so ready to share my love of history, and was anxious to involve myself in an older group of fellow lovers of history (average age of grad students in the department was around 28-29). I met so many nice people, and they politely tolerated my sense of supreme confidence. I tended to think (unconsciously) that if I just showed them how much I knew, they would all love me. This was quickly and immediately demonstrated to be a very optimistic and erroneous assumption.
In the early winter, prospective graduate students came to a conference hosted by our department, and we all met with them socially and talked to them about the program. I was SO looking forward to being a host, finding a new group of people that would be amazed at my knowledge and with whom I could praise the groundbreaking work that the history department was doing. I was very concerned with everyone going well, and wanted them to think that the program I had chosen was so wonderful that they simply must come and we would become quick fast friends. Before they came, a few e-mails went out over the department list-serv, which was read by almost all graduate students in the department (again, much older and more mature). A person in my cohort (the people I entered the program with) wrote an email asking if we should tell the new prospective students about the particular professors who were disgruntled, about the affair one had with his grad student, about the chronic lack of funding.
I was shocked. I had to FIX this!
How could anyone not love our department. I replied immediately, writing something to the effect of, “Under NO circumstances should ANYONE say ANYTHING bad about the department or air any dirty laundry.”
Whoops.
It turns out the initial email was written in sarcasm. This person very much liked the department and would NEVER say anything critical in mixed company. She was merely making a comment on the shiny image the department tried to project at these types of things. She wrote to me privately, conveying how insulted she was that I would think she needed to be told what to say and what not to say.
I apologized immediately, but for the rest of my time there, I always feared her reaction to what I would say. I made the same mistake several more times with other people, explaining behavioral norms as I needed them explained for me.
Feelings associated with the event: superiority, shock, fear, sadness
What I learned:
1) Avoid telling peers what they should or should not do
2) Avoid strong reactions to email. Sarcasm and tone are hard to assess in written formats
3) Own up to over-stepping your bounds immediately
4) Express gratitude when someone gives you direct feedback, don’t hide. It is a chance to learn.
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