So I'm about to take the brave step of moving all of my highly opinionated accounts to the same place, meaning I have to take ownership of being a Doofus in all aspects of my life XD

New, equally inactive account at @kristamonster :)

So long, and thanks @jerry for all the fish ❤️

If I could second one single thing I've read today, it's the message in this link (my own experience follows, to avoid confusion):

https://akademienl.social/@mvugt/109687645135998213

My life fell apart for unusual family reasons my first year of graduate school. And I went to my fellowship advisor early on, basically to tell her that I couldn't function, hoping that I could work together with my professors or the university to salvage what I had left.

Her advice was more or less to tell me to "deal with it", and my predictable struggles afterwards were met with such a lack of empathy that instead of learning to integrate the challenge, I fell apart as a human being.

I left the field for 5 years because of it.

It didn't have to be that way - I went back years later, at another elite institution, and was just fine in better circumstances.

But academia needs to move away from gatekeeping to make those who've made it feel worthy and towards empathy and humanity, especially in the sciences.

Empathy and rigour are *not* mutually exclusive.