..its strength and difficulties – reflecting on G-VERSITY “graduation”
Confronted by a hope for “supportive community”
A couple of weeks ago in Bern, Switzerland, we officially “wrap up” the MSCA training network with the final G-VERSITY conference. On Saturday morning, after we closed the conference, the final organizational meeting for the network took place. Alongside most of our supervisors and PIs of the network, we shared our own goodbyes and last impressions in our final supervisory board meeting. It was the reflections that came out of this session that I wanted to write about, to remind myself and perhaps others who read this too, in years to come.
Among the tears shed and hugs exchanged, a theme that came up as something meaningful for me was not the “great success” and “amazing research outcomes”, but how much there is wonderful support that most of us witnessed among the 15 of us, PhD students, and how most of us hope that this is not going to fade away.
This confronts me in a funny way. Apparently, a part of my brain had been so exposed to so much of the “competitiveness” in academia that my idea of “scientific rigor” and “competence” includes messages like “work harder than the next person, cause you have no value here otherwise”; “publish more and better than your peers or your career is over”; “identify the weakness of the next person and use that as your strength”… I noticed how easy it is to form more and more mistrust towards others, always implicitly thinking – I need to make sure to always show off how much I’m right and that I am the best and that everyone else is a fool (and if not, what’s the point of me being here?).
And what that brought me, at the end of the day, mostly is anxiety, since I believe others would think the same about me! “They are all out to get me, I need to make sure this doesn’t happen!”, or that “I worked so hard so I get to where I am now – I need to make sure that I look out just for myself cause others will just gossip about me and drag me down!” What a wonderful state to be in, huh. How does this belief and state stand side-by-side with the wishes during our “graduation” to continue this community of support?
Confronted by my own experience
The beliefs that I described just now, obviously, doesn’t feel like it aligns to the “supportive” community that we hoped to sustain. And it feels somewhat ridiculous as well, given that the things I am (and we are all) passionate about solving and understanding are basically how to develop a society that is more inclusive and equal, or in other words, “how can we be kind and better to each other in all that we do?” We came together in such a conference because we care so much about such issues – yet it’s funny to me that most of the time, the way I perceive academia is more of an arena out of hunger games where “survival of the fittest” as long as you survive, your ends justify your means.
Does it really justify the means, though? Would we end up producing positive impact and excellent scientific work by continuing in this worldview, fueled by jealousy and pride? The more important question for me though, is that the future workplace culture and field culture that I want to continue being in and support? will I play with such rules too? Is that genuinely good for me?
I am honestly not convinced. Cause even now, I already sense a lot of fear, anxiety, and worries from questions like “What if I don’t work hard enough than the next person?” “Will there be opportunities for me if I don’t fight claw and tooth?” “Will people drag me down?” – honest thoughts that leads me to want to hurt others more than thinking about ways to be generous, supportive, and improve the team that I work with and enrich the lives of people I get to be in contact with.
And standing as a professing Christian who holds dearly the views of the Bible on pursuing peace, hope, and love, I know that these thoughts, actions, and tendencies don’t necessarily align to the values that I hold. On top of that, I also believe that the vision of the field to produce excellent and helpful work would not get that far with this attitude amongst ourselves.
A kinder approach to science
I’d rather hold onto the kinder approach to science, where we care more about how to ensure one another’s well-being. That not only do we produce excellent work together to make the world a healthier, fairer, more inclusive place, but also it started with us committing to make that happen in our daily interactions too.
One of the author of the article I linked there told us during a chat that this approach was (and I think is and will be) receiving resistence and challenges even from within academia. Yet I think it is way more valuable and worth pursuing. Cause I would rather be in a place where I can be at peace, knowing that I stood with my integrity to help others, rather than intentionally being petty and hurtful. Even to those who seem to not share this value.
And to be frank, even though I can imagine a few ways of how I can work this way, I don’t know the full and clear implications from choosing such a value would be for my career or for my work. Be it in terms of the way I discuss my work, my writing, my decisions in behaving around (difficult) people, in teaching others, or even facing potentially unfair situations… I can’t say I have it figured out. I’m also not saying that this is an ultimate solution that would clearly bring peace and all good things, even to myself, by simply committing to it. But I do hope that writing this down reminds me that even when I couldn’t figure it out fully, I have experienced how blessed it is to realize that I have received kindness, support, and grace from others. And I hope I can extend that. And to hold out the hope that more people would see that what’s most impactful is really the way we have treated and invested in others.
Echoing Lilian and Leonardo who wrote the “ A kinder approach to science” article: “Our wish is that kindness becomes a habit. In fact, it may become a very enjoyable habit that gets easier and easier, particularly when it is echoed in the community as a whole.”
Suggested readings
If you want to read more about “A kinder approach to science”, you can read: Almeida-Souza, L. & O’Brien ,L. (2022). A kinder approach to science. Trends in Cell Biology, 32(3), 177-178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tcb.2021.11.003
