I have this colleague, "M," who I consider one of the people I am closest to at school. Ze is a year or two younger than me, outspoken, opinionated. I respect hir knowledge and abilities a lot. We've worked well together on a number of projects, large and small, over the years. Maybe because I'm mostly passive and ze is more aggressive, I get quite upset when we disagree or when I feel ze is acting like a jerk. The few times I've objected to something, ze has just shrugged and refused to budge, so I usually don't speak up. I guess I feel a little betrayed when this colleague doesn't live up to my expectations or doesn't act within what I think are proper boundaries. I know that's ridiculous, of course. Ze is an adult and acts in whatever way ze pleases; it has nothing to do with me. Still.
This summer, I've been working with a local high school teacher to find research internships for some of her students with our summer research teams. I actually thought it was a great opportunity for everyone involved and a good way to foster connections with the high school. The response from my colleagues has been disappointing as it took several prods before any of them grudgingly agreed to consider participating. M was one (of two) who finally met with a couple of potential students, and eventually committed to supervise one high school student for a few weeks. I was grateful for that, but I felt that M could have been a bit more gracious. Ze acted like it was a huge imposition to bring another person into "the M lab" as ze called it, where ze was working with a single undergraduate. That pretentiousness rankled ("the M lab" seriously? It's just an instructional lab they're using for the summer, not like it's M's personal space), but I tried to ignore it.
As soon as the high school student was accepted, ze sent me a series of emails. These were related to hir ancient complaint, repeatedly voiced every summer, about student access to the building and labs. Could the high school student get an ID card for access to our building? If not that, could the whole building be left unlocked all day, every day? Because it would be tedious to have to meet the student at the door to let him in each day.
Ze already knows the answers to these questions are no. It is not hir first time through this. It's annoying that ze keeps asking even though nothing has changed and I do not have any authority to change it. The campus safety department will not just leave the buildings unlocked all day. I won't even ask for that, because I actually prefer that the building is closed to random passers-by during the summer months. Our building is on a relatively busy city street and neighbors often walk through campus with their kids and dogs, but absolutely anyone could do the same. There are times when I'm the only person in the building and I don't want to suddenly run into some stranger on my way to the restroom (which has happened). I've talked about this with our administrative assistant, who is alone on the ground floor much of the time, and she agrees she feels much safer with the exterior doors locked in summer. Safety might be willing to issue an access card to the student, though I doubt it, but because this colleague brings up this access issue every. single. year (usually when complaining that we don't give interior room keys to students) I'm not even going to ask. The selfishness of the request rubs me wrong. I just say that non-employees and non-enrolled students do not get cards.
So it's the selfishness and the pretension, but also the lack of consideration for other people that irritates me. In many other ways, I think M is pretty cool, but when this side of hir shows I don't want to know hir. I feel bad about that, as if I'm letting M down by feeling let down myself. It takes me awhile to recover my equilibrium and to want to be around M after an episode like this. Plus, I kind of think I'm right about this issue.
I worry that I might have such a high standard of behavior that I'm not able to make or keep friends who don't measure up. I don't know if other people feel the way I do, or if there are ways to deal with the feelings more competently.
No comments:
Post a Comment