Dr. Cait S. Kirby (she/her)
@caitskirby
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Sciencing, learning, teaching, CfTing. Writing about disability in higher ed. Biology PhD @VanderbiltU ; MS + BA @SmithCollege #justice #equity #accessibility
Joined October 2019
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Pinned Tweet
We need more* professors who were "bad" at school.
People who struggled. People who tried to learn 6 different explanations before the aha. People who don't have perfect memories. People who take time to process things. People who got Ds.
Survivorship bias promotes exclusion.
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If all the leftists shouting about how we need to stop ordering from Amazon would wear a mask when they go places, some people* might feel safe enough to go into stores and could stop using Amazon.
But you're not ready for that community care and accountability.
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If you change "my students are so disengaged right now" to "my students are living through trauma, grief, chaos, and looking at a bleak future" does that make any kind of difference?
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My doctor: "Cait, you 100% need physical therapy. But COVID numbers are on the rise, and it is just not safe for you to go in-person. Here are some at-home exercises that maybe might possibly help."
Your indoor maskless lunches are ruining my life. 🫠
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Requiring disabled students (and faculty and staff) to do additional paperwork, testing, and outreach to possibly get the bare minimum accommodations while they are already incurring the disability tax (time, money, mental health costs) is inhumane.
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I ordered tests like these from out of the country and US customs confiscated them.
The US government is actively trying to keep knowledge out of our hands.
Then, the CDC reduces isolation guidance?
Unconscionable.
Imagine if instead of making COVID isolation guidelines as weak as the flu...
We approved combo rapid tests and made them free and available for everyone...
So that people could tell how long they need to isolate based on science and not feelings, whatever the pathogen.
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"Is giving a student an extension fair?"
Well, is bleeding from my intestines while I take an exam fair?
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What if - instead of making the 5,000th thread about tips for PhD students to survive the hell that is grad school - we made a list for grad schools about what they can do to make grad school less hellish?
What would you put on that list?
#AcademicChatter
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Politeness culture in academia means that everyone will lament your departure after someone has treated you poorly enough that you leave, but no one will intervene in or even name the poor treatment for fear of making an abuser feel bad.
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If you mandate attendance in your classroom during a pandemic, students will bring symptomatic COVID to you.
Take this opportunity to reimagine your attendance policy entirely.
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I tweeted this because I attended a talk about equity and inclusion with 600+ other folks where we were told that "differently abled" is preferable to "disabled" because disabled is negative/limiting. 1/5
Disabled is not a bad word.
Disabled is not a bad word.
Disabled is not a bad word.
Disabled is not a bad word.
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🧵I hear people say it's hard when cameras are off on Zoom because we can't see body language.
What that doesn't take into account is how much effort it takes for some folks to make their body language match their emotion AND how easy it is to misread body language. 1/
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Mentors NEED to go to therapy.
Do not bring your unresolved grad school trauma into your mentorship.
It wasn't fair when it happened to you and it's not fair when you do it to the next folks.
Go to therapy.
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"I'm making choices based on my level of risk and my level of comfort."
But your choices limit my choices. You get that, right?
You understand that our actions have consequences on ourselves AND on others? Right?
You are not making choices in a vacuum.
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@drcopps
I had an anesthesia-free colonoscopy and an anesthesia-free IUD insertion. IUD insertion hurt more, even though scope had many biopsies, but scope took way longer and required me to be absolutely completely still the whole time. I think IUD insertions should get anesthesia.
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If your professor is Timur Kuran at Duke University, and you're disabled, you should know that he says in this tweet he believes many students are faking disability for "status."
A audiologist friend observes “an epidemic” of high school and university students claiming to be hearing-impaired. Though they hear perfectly, in audio tests (designed to be hard to game) they fake deafness. Many are after a diagnosis of impairment for the status it would bring.
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I can't even count the number of disabled folks who are experiencing significant health crises right now.
After 2.5 years without routine health care, many have reached their breaking point.
While my friends are struggling to breathe, you're having a night out. 😬
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If you have a complex chronic illness, each specialist wants to treat one single symptom in one single organ and will refuse to treat or consider any other symptoms.
You are not a whole person to them, but disconnected organs and body parts.
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If you are sick in any way that could be contagious, you should not go anywhere public, especially for fun.
Idc how many negative rapid tests you receive.
Staying home when sick is praxis.
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cn: abuse
A mentor can be perfectly kind to some mentees and profoundly abusive to others. The kindness to some students does not erase their abuse of others.
This is often purposeful. By limiting their abuse to only some students, they may get away with it. Do not let them. 1/
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Universities are pursuing fall in-person classes "for the good of the students." In this interactive story, you move through just one day of in-person classes from the perspective of a student.
#AcademicChatter
@twinethreads
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*I'm not saying no professors like this exist.
But when grant funding agencies ding grad students for a single C in second-year chemistry, we're losing incredible teachers.
When extemporaneous speech is the highest measure of success, we're losing folks.
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Disabled is not a bad word.
Disabled is not a bad word.
Disabled is not a bad word.
Disabled is not a bad word.
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Me: "I cannot afford this test."
Health Advocate: "Well, can you afford to be hospitalized?"
That is not the clever quip that you think it is.
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The accommodation request process is so harmful to those requesting accommodations.
It is not easy. It is not intuitive. It does not protect disabled workers. It positions disabled workers' needs in conflict with their employer.
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To anyone who is feeling overwhelmed right now, I offer you my favorite piece of advice:
Done is better than perfect.
Often, done is even better than good.
#AcademicChatter
#PhDChat
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*And some people will always need Amazon and that's fine. We won't be shaming folks for circumstances and needs over here.
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Academia imagines and manufactures urgency.
Slow down.
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The job market is a disaster right now.
If you are from a marginalized group and applying to jobs, fellowships, post-docs, etc, DM me and I will give you FREE feedback on your materials.
I'm especially happy to help women of color, disabled folks, and trans & nonbinary folks.
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Giving an extension to a student can be the difference between a student
losing scholarships, dropping out, harming themselves, and going into immediate debt
OR
not.
*Granting* an extension has never profoundly changed the course of my life, but *getting* one has.
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Imagining something different can be threatening to people who thrive in this environment.
So let's put more people in positions of power who didn't thrive here. Shake it up.
Imagine something better.
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Academics who are part of an institution and don't critique and push back on the institution astound me.
Becky, I've seen how you tear apart your students' essays. Send some of that fire away from the 18-year olds and toward the mega institution traumatizing everyone.
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This is an ADA violation, no?
Very concerned to see that
@MassGenBrigham
is telling patients that they "cannot ask staff members to wear a mask"!
#KeepMasksInHealthCare
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@ashleyruba
They are called backdoor references. They reached out to someone you did not list, and that person said something. In my experience, when someone does a backdoor reference, they're looking for *any reason* to not hire you. In my opinion, bullet likely dodged. Sorry and it stinks.
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@ProfChrisMJones
I've done this in classes! One thing I was very thoughtful about was making sure each student received two: one that was intellectual and one that was socioemotional. I wanted to make sure I wasn't accidentally biased in my awards based on societal norms/expectations.
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Hypothetically, would you read an article about a hypothetical university that is refusing to allow a hypothetical student to get their PhD because they mention systemic barriers, disability symptoms, and abuse by unnamed faculty in their hypothetical dissertation dedication?
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As we come to the close of another unbelievably difficult semester, I want to remind everyone, faculty, undergrad students, grad students, staff:
Done is better than good.
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I would like to propose a challenge for all instructors who want students to live and die by due dates because of the "real world" -
For one semester, keep a list of all of the truly immovable due dates that you fully meet.
My guess is that the list will not be very long.
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@careerconversa1
I want to push back on this. I stutter. It often sounds like I am searching for words when I am just speaking. Folks with anxiety or shyness might sound disjointed. We need to be accepting of all kinds of presentations and speech, regardless of how "painful" you find it.
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All the women, Black folks, fat folks, trans folks, chronically ill folks, etc have had to beg to be taken seriously at the ER reading this like 🧐
Trauma Surgeon: What was the indication for an automatic trauma activation on this patient?
Me: He’s a farmer.
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Quick reminder: it's entirely valid to be frustrated by virtual conferences.
It is also true that for some of your colleagues, virtual conferences are the first comfortable and accessible conferences we have ever attended.
Just something to keep in mind.
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The implication that being disabled is so bad that we need to come up with alternative words is demeaning to folks who identify as disabled and will likely scare people away from embracing their disabled identity.3/5
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What is grad school if not a pyramid scheme persevering?
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Sometimes what looks zoned-out to one person might be fierce concentration for another. Sometimes fidgeting is calming. Sometimes a lack of eye contact promotes recollection. Sometimes when people are working so hard to look like they fit in, they don't retain anything. 3/
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My 25-person genetics class filled up in early pre-registration.
The class was canceled when I shared that I could only teach online. I was told teaching online was not possible in spring 2022.
I will return to this tweet on the 1st day of spring semester. Any bets?
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Grad school was so hierarchical. People told me:
wait your turn,
listen to me because I have a PhD and you don't,
you have to tolerate this professor's inappropriate behavior because he's important.
And when I pushed back they said:
that's just the way it is.
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Can we take that back into in-person activities? Can we recognize that some people are projecting one emotion but feeling another? Can we recognize that "fixing our face" to be palatable takes energy? Can we recognize that it's filtered through the recipient's perspective? 2/
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Disability is something that can and should be celebrated. Disability should not be hidden behind euphemisms and flowery language. Hermione Granger said, "fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself." I'm not afraid of disability, why are you? 5/5
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I'm a graduate student who just spent the *entire* weekend doing unpaid labor related to disability & accessibility that a Uni will benefit from. The academy MUST find ways to acknowledge this work and have it count towards graduation requirements.
#AcademicChatter
#HigherEd
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If you polled disabled folks, "differently abled" would lose in a landslide. Don't believe me? The disabled community is active and thriving here on Twitter. Just look around. 4/5
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@kathrynmsantos
@POTUS
Make sure Johnny sees adults who stutter when they speak, too! It's okay to stutter. Stutterers are successful, even when we don't hide it!
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I called corporate and told them this was an ADA violation and threatened legal action. I received an apology and they offered to let me a) not have a photo on my card, and b) use my license as my photo ID. They said it was a learning experience for them.
Heard
@Costco
requires disabled people to unmask to take a photo (indoors with unmasked staff & customers) to renew or join as a new member. Several in our community had to refund memberships due to this dangerous policy. Why isn’t a license sufficient? ADA rights infringement?
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One thing I hate about how illness and disability are treated is that folks who suffer silently or with a smile on get lauded as being graceful in tough circumstances.
If I am suffering, I'm gonna shout very loudly.
Who does it serve to suffer in silence? Not me.
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By relying on body language, we are making a lot of assumptions about behavior and how people look.
Maybe those assumptions are not correct, so when we go back to in-person activities, let's keep that in mind. 4/
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@ProfChrisMJones
The intellectual ones were basically around effort - trying again when something is hard, always asking questions, never being afraid to be wrong about something. The socioemotional ones were about supporting others in class or the general community vibe.
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In preschool, kids learn that not everything is always equal. If Bobby skins his knee on the playground, the teacher gives him a band aid. If Martina bonks her head, she doesn't need a band aid for her knee, she needs an ice pack. Susie, who didn't get hurt, needs neither.
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If your disabled faculty and staff are underperforming right now, it's probably because they are making three billion phone calls trying to acquire accommodations and finding challenges at every single turn.
This is difficult by design and that is so cruel.
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I'm not calling anyone out - they genuinely didn't know better. But now 600 people are going to call their disabled colleagues and students "differently abled" and perhaps even correct someone who uses the word "disabled." 2/5
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If one more doctor tells me that my symptoms sound so serious I need an ER and at the same time refuse to give me any care, my brain is going to explode from the cognitive dissonance.
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If you can't handle me at my 'live-tweeting a mental and physical breakdown due to insurance issues,' then you don't deserve me at my 'spicy accessible pedagogy and system dismantling takes.'
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When we encourage faculty to use captions in class meetings with students, but we don't use captions in meetings with faculty and staff, we are implicitly suggesting that disabled faculty and staff members don't exist.
Set your Zoom to automatically caption every single meeting.
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One skill I gained during my PhD is reading primary literature in STEM. I realize that we expect students to know how to do this without ever training them.
Here's an infographic about primary literature and how I read it (quickly).
#AcademicChatter
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Rethink the complaint process that protects abusive mentors and advisors.
Allow students to submit letters for tenure files, especially when they are negative.
Reconsider tenure so that abusive faculty do not remain at a university.
Don't hire abusive faculty.
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Applauding myself:
I received harmful mentorship in graduate school that absolutely scarred me. I got therapy.
6 months out, I lead mentorship workshops I am told are empowering and introspective. They ask me to return.
It is possible to break the cycle.
#AcademicChatter
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I have statistically significant evidence that graduate students (at my Uni) are attending professional development workshops on Zoom at a higher rate than IRL.
I just want to put that into the world. No matter how much people are saying they want IRL - they're not showing up.
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All behavior is communication.
When students miss class, cheat, miss deadlines, and don't engage in class how you'd like, they're communicating.
They may be communicating that the class is uninteresting or unclear, or that their lives are complex.
Are you listening?
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A lot of the pushback on my Zoom versus IRL tweets boil down to "but IRL works for ME!!! We can't do Zoom because *I* don't thrive that way."
Okay, but other people exist and thrive differently? We've heard your opinion, loudly. Now let's listen to someone else's opinion.
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If you work in student disability services or the disability services office, it is your *responsibility* to push the system to be better. Do not be complacent. Do not settle.
If compliance is the bar, the bar is on the floor.
Not willing to do this? You're in the wrong job.
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Academia loves to promote failure and consistent hard work as the recipe for success.
But this leaves out those who cannot work hard consistently. I'm thinking especially of folks with energy limiting disabilities for whom failure is an unfathomable waste of precious energy.
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If you talk, write, tweet, etc, about equitable pedagogy, but you're going out to movies, restaurants, bars, shows, etc, while people can't get cancer treatment and brain surgery due to a highly contagious virus you could be spreading, your praxis needs more practice.
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Universities are still pursuing in-person classes in fall 2020 "for the good of the students." In this interactive story, you move through just one day of in-person classes from the perspective of a faculty member.
#HigherEd
#AcademicChatter
@twinethreads
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For new troublemakers just getting started: when you're outraged, ask a question.
"Just to be clear, you're asking grad students to attend classes so faculty don't have to?"
"I don't understand, you want women and POC to do more unpaid labor?"
"Why can't I write this?"
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If you are a PI and you haven't explicitly told your students that their health (mental & physical) is more important than their productivity, and that it's okay to be less productive right now, what are you waiting for?
#covid19
#AcademicTwitter
@AcademicChatter
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If you are hosting an educational conference and
you plan to use the words "equity" or "inclusion" and
you don't have a strong mask requirement,
your praxis is flawed.
(I truly hope I don't see any of you in mask less photos because I will have to stop citing you.)
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This means for each flare you may have to 1) travel to, 2) explain your symptoms to, 3) endure testing from, 4) pay hundreds of dollars to, and 5) generally shower with compliments:
a rheumatologist, GI doctor, ENT, dermatologist, immunologist, internist, gyn, neuro, and more.
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No, I can't afford to be hospitalized, either, so let's get me medication to avoid my hospitalization, thanks.
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Often when someone is discriminated against, denied accommodations, or abused, we tell them to report it.
But we don't often recognize the huge emotional and physical toll reporting abuse and discrimination is; it's exhausting.
If you have reported, I am holding space for you.
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I was forcibly removed from my medication, left unmedicated for a month, switched to a new medication without bridge therapy, and I need to prove to every single doctor that I feel like crap, one symptom at a time.
The US healthcare system is a disaster.
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cn: abuse
If some students had a good experience with a mentor, it is only evidence that the mentor didn't abuse *some* of their students. It is not evidence that they are not abusive. It certainly does not invalidate other students' claims of abuse. 3/
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For the professors out there, worried that students need to be able to speak clearly without stuttering and without ums.
I win awards for my presentations. I gave a TEDx talk and a commencement speech.
I teach classes and lead workshops.
I stutter the whole time. No one cares.
@sc_k
I don't care if the students stutter, stumble, fidget, or make mistakes. I care that in the end, the students convey some crucial information. So that crucial information is reflected in the peer evals.
I tend to see very little bias because the evals are so structured.
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If you grade students purely on whether or not they are physically in the classroom, you are ableist and classist.
If you grade students on whether or not they are physically in the classroom during a respiratory pandemic, someone's blood is on your hands.
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Today, on International Day Of Women and Girls In Science, I defended my dissertation, which explored mitochondrial DNA copy number regulation in worms.
#InternationalDayOfWomenInScience
#WomenInScience
#AcademicChatter
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cn: abuse
This is common in other situations of abuse (like child abuse), and it's called scapegoating. The abuser often points to the unabused students as evidence of their goodness, and explains it's all in that one student's head, which amounts to gaslighting. 2/
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The medication that my insurance forced me off of last year?
It is now their preferred medication.
I am not even joking that they kicked me off that medication - which I can now never take again, because that's how biologics go - and now it's their preferred med.
What.
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A pandemic is not the only reason to give people grace. People are enduring hardship all the time, whether or not you know it, and our world is, sadly, not equitable. We should be giving people grace all the time.
Respond to people being human with humanity.
#AcademicChatter
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🧵I'm hearing faculty talk a lot about "accommodating" students right now, given COVID, etc and how stressful it is.
We need to make sure we're careful about our language. The word "accommodation" has a very specific meaning when it comes to illness and disability. 1/
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I am a human person.
If you reply to these tweets, please consider that I read and process your tweets with my little human nervous system.
A human person is on the other side of these little letters.
If you mistreat my nervous system, it is my right to block you.
💜
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I see lots of professors complaining about students who don't email them "the right way." This is another example of the hidden curriculum that I thought I would try to expose.
Here's a one-pager on writing an email to a professor.
@AcademicChatter
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When the abusive, gaslighting "coach" (hired by your institution for questionable reasons) tells you not to communicate with advisors via email because it contributes to "miscommunications" they are trying to eliminate a paper trail.
Don't listen.
#AcademicTwitter
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I attended TWO meetings in which being 'unemotional and rational' was held as the preferred science personality and being 'emotional' was denigrated.
Being an emotional person does not make me a bad scientist. Emotions and logic are not mutually exclusive.
@AcademicChatter
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My syllabus alone convinced 25 (mostly seniors) to wake up at 8AM every Monday to talk about science and I'm grumpy that I don't get to do that because an accommodation that was offered to everyone just one year ago was no longer available.
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To faculty who say that they are preparing students for the "real world" and that deadlines are not flexible in the real world:
The US Senate just punted passing the BBB until 2022.
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Some faculty say, "Well they should tell me what's going on. Then I'll consider giving them an extension."
Okay, but would you share with a professor that you were pooping blood? Five professors? Someone who you hope will write you a rec letter? 1/
"Is giving a student an extension fair?"
Well, is bleeding from my intestines while I take an exam fair?
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As we are talking about how we can make our courses resilient to the fact that students will have to miss class due to sickness more than any other year, I want to introduce you to a strategy that
@SmithCollege
uses for many of their classes: self-scheduled exams. A 🧵. 1/
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Obviously there are layers and many jobs don't have sick time, and that's a complicated other thing, for which I offer my condolences.
But choosing to go get drinks or brunch or see a movie while you're downing fever reducer for your viral illness? What?
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@autistictic
Let's document the accommodations that institutions are making for
#coronavirus
so that once it's over and life goes back to normal we can point to the precedent set here. "You could do it then, so do it now for me."
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Who does it serve to suffer in silence?
Capitalism. Misogyny. Racism. American exceptionalism. Ethnocentrism.
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When I say meritocracy is a myth, I will just point to my twitter threads from the last month.
Through no fault of my own, every single spare moment I have had has revolved around getting the medication I need to survive.
We all have the same 24 hours in a day?
No.
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Super weird to hear people go on and on about equity and inclusion and then hop on a plane to their maskless conference during an ongoing pandemic.
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