Young. And a woman. And lots of minorities rolled into one adorable brown package.

I normally don’t get angry on Tuesdays. Tuesdays are fun days. I like my professor (certain of my friends will probably say that I like him too much and they’re probably right). I like his class (even though it’s half psychology and ew psych). He lets us watch How I Met Your Mother during class time. Dude is awesome. But yesterday was Tuesday. And yesterday I was angry.

I wouldn’t have been mad if we hadn’t been talking about social capital and social networks in class. I shouldn’t have been mad because I saw this conversation coming at the beginning of lecture. You can’t do a lecture on networking in a business program and not get into “If Robert knows X, Y, and, Z, he has –this many–opportunities. Would Robby, Roberta, and Roberto have those same opportunities?” You can’t not do it. If you can find a way not to do it, you probably shouldn’t be teaching.

Anyway, we’re discussing the politics of professionalism and that good ol’ Good Ol’ Boy System and workplace discrimination, and we come to a really complicated diagram that I will spare you and the example of Robert. Robert has lots of connections inside and outside of the organization, and will probably get lots of promotions relatively easily because of it. Would this same model work for Robby, Roberta, or Roberto?

No, says the text. Most likely not. It’d be a lot better for Robby (a young man), Roberta (a woman), or Roberto (a minority) to find a way to be one of Robert’s (a middle aged white male) multiple connections, and use him as a mentor/springboard to “lend you credibility.”

Let’s not talk about how I hate that “lend you credibility” bs. Not right now.

Now my professor, young, cool bro that he is, asks us as a class, “Who thinks that that’s not true anymore? That young people and women and minorities don’t have to network differently within organizations to get ahead?”

And no one raised their hand. I was shocked. My professor was shocked. Shocked in a pleasant way, but shocked nonetheless. Everything was good.

Until one lone white guy raised his hand.

My professor, bless him, tried to stem the carnage because I sit in the front row and if I could feel myself start glaring I know he could actually see it. “Oh wow,” he says, fumbling for a save. “Okay. Well, who doesn’t think that?” My hand shot up. Last I checked, I was young, a woman, and a minority. I’m pretty sure I know a little more about that kind of thing than him.

“Well, you’re both right, in a way,” says my professor, still trying to salvage what I think should have been a cut and dry conversation. He said something else that I don’t quite remember and moved on, but I couldn’t get back on track for the rest of class. I was angry. And so, once class was over, I pulled him aside to ask him how the heck we both could be right.

“Because I’m young,” I said, “and a woman, and several minorities all rolled up in one little brown package (he laughed at that part), and it makes me very angry when some outgroup person or someone who’s not a combination of those things tells me I don’t have to work that hard.”

And we talked about it. It’s not often I get a chance to explain my frustrations to an out-group person and they understand, or if they don’t understand they’re quiet and listen. It wasn’t a particularly enlightening conversation (not for me, anyway), but it helped. He told me that he was glad I came to talk to him about it, because it lets him know that that portion of lecture is still relevant. I told him that I was glad he included it, because like I said earlier, if you can find a way to not include that in your subject matter you shouldn’t be teaching. He agreed, and then we talked about how it’s never mentioned in textbooks. He apologized again; “I’m sorry this is still relevant,” and asked if anything he said made me feel better.

"A little," I admitted.

He laughed a little. "But not enough to un-vex you?"

"Definitely not enough to completely un-vex me."

Then I told him to have a happy Thanksgiving and was off.

I’m still not happy about the dismal prospects of my career—and yes, I do consider that particular bit of strategic advice to be dismal. Who would be glad about constantly being told to fix themselves to an older, successful, preferably white male mentor to get ahead? Don’t people realize that that brings up its own unique set of challenges? I’d be his side-project, his affirmative action baby, his mistress (don’t scoff; I’ve heard those allegations before). It's not that simple.

But I’m not about to ignore what I’m given to use either.

Name Calling

I have a serious issue about not pronouncing people’s names right, or at least about not even trying to pronounce people’s names right. As a result, I started not liking one of my professors on day 1.

This is what happened.

You all know the drill for the first day of the school. Right before whoever’s in charge calls roll, they make some self-deprecating joke about how they’re awful at pronunciation and please forgive them if they butcher your name. My name always gets butchered even though it’s really simple and looks exactly the way it sounds.

But I don’t not like this guy because he mispronounced my name. I don’t like him because of the names he didn’t even try on.

He went down the roll, calling people’s names and not doing such a bad job of getting it right. And then he just stopped.

“Oh no,” he groaned. “Here we go.” And then he stammered out the name of the first of several students from China and Taiwan.

If you’ve ever had class with international students, you know that a lot of them come prepared with English names. The student whose name he hacked to bits gave her English name, let’s say it was Sarah, and our professor breathed a sigh of relief.

“Oh thank goodness,” he says. “That is so much better! Really, thank you for that.” It didn’t stop there. The profuse thanks continued on for two more minutes. It was awkward.

And then he did it again. And again. And again. And again. Every time he got to one of the other students from China and Taiwan he groaned, and when given their English names he lauded them for uncomfortably long amounts of time.

But when he arrived at “Megan,” he said, “Okay, I want to get this right. Is it Meh-gan or ME-gan? I once had a girl in class that was emphatic about being her name being ME-gan, so which do you prefer? I want to get this right. I mean she was serious about it; it was ME-gan, not Meh-gan.”

This continued for several minutes.

What the hell? Lili, Zhou, and Zhang (those aren’t their names, but are close to them) have to change their names but you can spend 10 minutes debating whether it’s Meh-gan or ME-ghan? Do I even have to explain what this scenario implies about this man? Am I the only person here that sees the borderline xenophobic nature of his actions? Isn’t taking someone’s name the first step in taking their identity?

Beware, Lili, Zhou, and Zhang: you are now Toby and it only gets worse from there.

(Anyone who gets the reference is awesome.)