Professional Development

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Clarissa

March 30, 2016

Our office of professional development sent out a survey asking if we want to attend seminars dedicated to dealing with helicoptering parents and to avoiding microaggressions. I’m wondering if the folks who work in that office ever emerge from it and meet our students, many of whom are parents themselves and who inhabit an entirely different reality than the spoiled brats who fuss about microaggressions as their rich parents hover above them.

I’m planning to remain professionally undeveloped and avoid such seminars.

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6 responses to “Professional Development”

cliff arroyo

March 30, 2016

Maybe panic over microagressions and helicopters are now status symbols for universities so that places that are free of them want to get on the bandwagon.

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1. Clarissa
  
  March 30, 2016
  
  I think you are right. Our administrators even tried to manufacture our own little protest movement in the image of the Yale and Missouri protests. It was a cute little thing that didn’t manage to catch on in a big way because we have a very different student and professor population here. All of our students work and have no time to hang about the campus, feeling slighted.
  
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Shakti

March 30, 2016

Or maybe they’re focusing on microaggressions in professional development to avoid actual professional development or dealing with real issues that would cost money or involve an actual change in behavior. How much do these seminars cost the university?

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1. Clarissa
  
  March 30, 2016
  “How much do these seminars cost the university?”
  
  GOOD question. This is only one of the many such outfits on campus that organize endless seminars, podcasts, round tables, brown bag luncheons, book clubs, etc. I only visit them when I need to tick a box on my service requirements agenda and, to be honest, never derived an ounce of use from any of them.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    March 30, 2016
    
    I want to add that some of these seminars have interesting topics and I used to attend them, hoping to learn something useful. But the people who are invited to run them are invariably of such low intellectual and personal characteristics that I gave up.
    
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    1. Jones
      
      March 31, 2016
      
      … check your privilege! … [chortle]
      
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