Comment by erdojo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by erdojo | Hacker News Reader

I started off reading this with the expectation I'd be right in joining the fight with her. It is, after all, a pretty bad allegation, us ladies have to stick together, and I'm ready to take a side!

But oh my gosh THE FEELS. This is so emotionally written that it's almost impossible to derive any legitimate facts from the story. It's like a bad romance-gone-wrong novel written from the perspective of a perpetual victim.

Parts 1-3 are bad enough. Her follow-up is even worse. Oh yes, everyone is terrified of millennials. Haha. No. You're not qualified to scare us. You just think you are, and every stupid little setback sends you into a deluge of tears (how many times did she describe her crying in this story?).

She might have been entirely in the right with her allegation, I don't know. It's too hard to tell amidst her poor me inner dialogue of pain and suffering and tragedy.

One thing her college life didn't teach her was any semblance of resilience. That life isn't always fair. That some times you suck it up. I mean, no one died, her career wasn't over (unless she insisted it be over, which apparently she did), and she got her PhD.

And she got her PhD AND got to keep her integrity. So, why's she quitting again?

If you spent 7 years of your life on a project only to haven it stolen out from underneath you by an unscrupulous "mentor", you're saying wouldn't get emotional about it? As far as I can tell, her story reveals exceptional resilience: She did, after all, get her Ph.D., despite having a normal emotional response to the revelation that people she trusted for a substantial proportion of her adult life were conspiring to screw her over.

You don't finish a PhD without being resilient. Seeing as how her work is about postcolonial feminism, she's probably very aware of how unfair life is.

Read the post less as an argument in court and more as a therapeutic response. And don't be a dick. If you had worked for years (grading lame papers and eating ramen for real because you don't get paid anything) and someone was about to steal or did steal the only thing of value you've got due to that work, you'd be upset, too.

It's also an enormous betrayal from a part of her life from what she probably viewed as the most significant part of her life (assuming the facts are as described). That sort of betrayal is really hard to handle.

Agreed, sounds like she had a lousy experience but indicting the whole academy for "failing those at its highest levels" (her words) seems like a bit of a stretch. The warning signs were all plainly visible when she signed up for this debacle six years ago. Some acknowledgment of the role she herself played in this would be refreshing. (Disclaimer: I read all 3/4/6 posts, so maybe she does somewhere.) Reminds me of what the bottom fell out of the legal industry 10 years ago, and the students all sued their law schools.

I just can't understand why she didn't ever go to this Dr. Mao FIRST.

What could she have gained from that conversation? A written admission of plagiarism from the adviser and a lollipop? Very unlikely. I'm inclined to believe the OP verbatim, well, ok, 90% of it at least. I doubt Dr. Mao would have done anything but try to throw the student under the bus even more. I mean, come on, they flippin published the material while knowing that there were tons of emails proving they plagiarized the material. They knew they were untouchable and they were right

And what is wrong with being emotional?

"how many times did she describe her crying in this story?"

Twice.

Once the evening after she'd be savaged during her dissertation defence. The second when she was attacked over her late submission by the Dean who'd she'd earlier gone to for help.

Maybe try using your fingers if you find counting so difficult.

The commenter was trying to portray her as weak or too emotional, basic logical fallacy used for centuries for weakening an argument they have already lost inside their inner souls.

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