Confidentiality vs openness

I just had a very interesting conversation with an elder relative.  He was worried that perhaps, I write a bit too much on this blog about things that I should be "reserved about."  His advice is well taken.  I am sure different people have different views about how much they like to tell others about themselves  - for example, if you are on Facebook, on one hand, you might have friends who share very little about their personal lives and a lot about their political and philosophical views, while on the other hand, some will even share pictures of their feet after a pedicure!

In the academic blogging world, there are many who write very frankly about their daily lives (both personal and professional), but take great care to hide their identity.  I realised soon that anonymity was not really an option, given the kind of posts I was writing.  I wanted to give an account of what I feel as a young academic here, and that means writing about new science institutes, Mathematics, balancing teaching/research with admin duties, experiences specific to women - so, given our small community, that pretty much rules out anonymity.

But, even with the real identity, I do not feel the need to be too reserved.

I know of bloggers who have had to either turn off commenting on their blogs or do not allow anonymous commenting.  But, this blog does not require that kind of moderation.  The Indian academic blogging community is mostly friendly and cool (or possibly does not not care that much) about the kind of things I write [1].  I have never had to think about closing down the comments due to any large scale trolling.
My only negative experience was when an idiot kept putting up comments repeatedly on a post I wrote on my two-body problem.  His/her comments were more in the nature of personal attacks and added nothing of value to the post.  But after getting deleted a few times, this stopped.

Perhaps, my relative was concerned that I would be judged for the things I write here, or by revealing too much about myself, I would give others a chance to attack me on perceived weaknesses.  These are valid concerns from his point of view, and I have had a few negative experiences, in which I felt that personal considerations like my marital status were unnecessarily brought into professional matters.  But in all these cases, the offenders were not reading this blog.  Overall, this is not something I worry about.  If someone wants to be judgmental or find reasons to attack someone else, they would do it anyways, blog or not.  If I can just learn to stay away from such people, both professionally and personally, why worry?

The blog just gives me a chance to vent.  Sometimes, writing things down can also reveal a wholly different perspective from one offered by muddled up thoughts in the mind.


Questions for readers:

1) While interacting with colleagues, is keeping your personal life away from such interactions of importance to you?

2) If you write blogs, do you have rules about what you would be uncomfortable writing about? If you retain anonymity, does it make writing more comfortable for you?



    
[1] There is much more intensity in discussion about politics.  For example, see the comments to this post by Rahul Siddharthan.  As you can see, people can get really offensive and defensive.  

Knowing all that I now know

A few days ago, I had a long conversation with a friend from high school.  It was a rhetorical conversation and we were trying to figure out what would happen if we could go back into time by a few years.  If we knew all that we know today, would we make the same decisions, take the same jobs, react to situations the same way?

I felt that I would more or less live the same life all over again, would take the same decisions, but with a different perspective.

To start with, if I could undo something from the student/postdoc years, it would be the amount of time and energy I wasted feeling insecure about the future.  Had I known then that institutes like IISERs would come up or that there would be so many openings for mathematicians in India, I would not have worried so much.
Instead, I would have channelled all that energy into learning more Mathematics and working on research problems with more focus and determination.

In terms of career moves, I would more or less take the same decisions, but would have a more objective understanding of what those decisions entail.  For example, I think I would still join N1 = IISER Kolkata. But, I would not enter with rosy perceptions that all is great: I would have thought carefully about things that were not so favourable (for example, lack of proper living conditions, social life) and would have made better arrangements to be comfortable and self-reliant (like keeping a car, possibly staying out of "campus" etc).  Most importantly, I would have joined with the awareness  that people often move in pursuit of better career opportunities.  That kind of objectivity/clarity would have mitigated most of the distress that I felt in my last few months there. [1]

Would I move to New1 = IISER Pune? Of course :-)  But, it is best that I moved here from another place as I am better able to appreciate the atmosphere and the opportunities that this institute offers.

Generally speaking, if I could live the last few years again, I would do the same things, but would try to be more rational and less emotional.  I would be a lot more patient with unreasonable colleagues during faculty meetings or while organising institute activities.  I would more willingly consider the possibility that perhaps I was being unreasonable, not them. At the same time, I would speak up more forcefully in some situations than I did the first time over.  I wouldn't stress about things that were not under my control and would be more proactive about things that were.  I would still write this blog, but probably wouldn't write some of the posts (they are now removed).

But, most importantly, knowing all that I now know, I would never, ever miss a deadline!










[1] But, there is much to be said about rosy perceptions. Had I not had rosy perceptions, I would have become cynical and aloof from the very beginning and this would have hindered professional functioning.  Many people disguise negativity as objectivity and bring much pain to themselves and their colleagues/students as a result!