I’m attending a professional conference this week—SIOP, or Society of Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Attendees generally have master’s or PhDs in the field or are candidates for one of those degrees. There are a bazillion sessions offered during the conference: research on various topics or panel discussions and even debates.
This afternoon I was in a very full session on visualizing big data. The woman next to me was a PhD candidate in I/O and had very long hair (this detail matters to the story). Since the session was full and had been anticipated to be full, the chairs were very close together—when I say close, I mean they were touching. So there wasn’t much room. The woman next to me kept running her hand through her hair and sort of flipping it or rearranging it. All fine and good except that her hair kept getting way into my personal space (what little there was) and hit me a few times. Plus she fidgeted like crazy; she crossed her legs over and over again and then kept bouncing the top leg up and down. I was nervous her heel was going to smack my right knee, the one that was so bruised from my fall last week.
I considered saying something to her, something to indicate I knew it wasn’t on purpose behavior or malicious but that I found it pretty distracting. I also thought (and think) that she’s going to need to get a handle on those behaviors or else they’ll end up being real drawbacks as she looks to launch either an academic or corporate-based career. While it’s not fair that people get judged by things like nervous fidgets or the inability to recognize and respect personal space, it happens all the time.
I wondered too what, if any, responsibility I bore toward helping a young woman with some kind, specific feedback like that. I’m still not sure about that one, to be honest.
In the end, I said nothing. I’m not her adviser or her friend and even though I disliked her hair whipping me the way it did, the potential risk of offering feedback like that outweighed any social or professional obligation I might have. But I’m curious. What would you have done?
This afternoon I was in a very full session on visualizing big data. The woman next to me was a PhD candidate in I/O and had very long hair (this detail matters to the story). Since the session was full and had been anticipated to be full, the chairs were very close together—when I say close, I mean they were touching. So there wasn’t much room. The woman next to me kept running her hand through her hair and sort of flipping it or rearranging it. All fine and good except that her hair kept getting way into my personal space (what little there was) and hit me a few times. Plus she fidgeted like crazy; she crossed her legs over and over again and then kept bouncing the top leg up and down. I was nervous her heel was going to smack my right knee, the one that was so bruised from my fall last week.
I considered saying something to her, something to indicate I knew it wasn’t on purpose behavior or malicious but that I found it pretty distracting. I also thought (and think) that she’s going to need to get a handle on those behaviors or else they’ll end up being real drawbacks as she looks to launch either an academic or corporate-based career. While it’s not fair that people get judged by things like nervous fidgets or the inability to recognize and respect personal space, it happens all the time.
I wondered too what, if any, responsibility I bore toward helping a young woman with some kind, specific feedback like that. I’m still not sure about that one, to be honest.
In the end, I said nothing. I’m not her adviser or her friend and even though I disliked her hair whipping me the way it did, the potential risk of offering feedback like that outweighed any social or professional obligation I might have. But I’m curious. What would you have done?
