Thick Skin

 

The first time I attended a Dagstuhl workshop was in 2017.

From my experience, people who aren’t computer scientists, even in Germany, don’t know what or where Dagstuhl is. Thus, first an intro.

Dagstuhl is a, not-that-easy-to-reach, place in Germany that allows computer scientists to organize workshops quite cheaply. The workshops are invitation-only, and the crowd is kept to ~60 people. The goal is to focus on a research topic with experts for either half a week or a whole week. It is a big deal to get invited to one. Therefore, I was quite excited to attend one.

The first day of the workshop, we had a session, where people could sign up to give a short presentation on a topic that would potentially trigger discussion among the attendees. I did sign up. I gave my presentation. Except for a couple comments, the reactions weren’t that encouraging, and I received a somewhat personal, non-technical, negative comment as well.

For the purpose of this post, the topic of my presentation, the man who shouted out the personal comment, or the comment itself doesn’t matter. This man apologized to me the next day, which I appreciated. I have received nothing but respect from him since then, and he is someone I have high respect for as well.

The important thing is how I felt after that presentation, especially as a result of that comment.

I wished the week to be over and to get out of there. I was annoyed that Dagstuhl is out of nowhere, which is on purpose, so that people have very little distractions and can focus on thinking “big thoughts”. But if I could spend a few hours away, in a city, I could have more easily cleared my head and found focus again. I thought I would never want to attend another Dagstuhl workshop. I felt alone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I left the evening social activities early to lock myself in my room. I over-drank one evening. My plan was to visit my cousin and his family, who live in Stuttgart, after Dagstuhl. I looked forward to seeing my cousin, a man, whom I had a very different relationship to, one that didn’t require any armor, compared to the men who surrounded me in Dagstuhl.

The next time someone reached out to me for a Dagstuhl workshop, it was 2019. I was asked by Goetz Graefe and Caetano Sauer to co-organize one, also together with Allison Lee and my academic sister Renata Borovica. That was hard to say “no” to, and that was the workshop that healed my relationship with Dagstuhl and helped me to get rid of most of my armor in similar work events.

 

With the distance of the years, I can now say that most of the comments after that presentation, even though not super encouraging, helped me develop better technical arguments and realize what I should have made clearer while presenting that particular topic. That is the thing with the technical comments. Even if they may sound negative or aren’t expressed in a constructive way, they can still help you improve yourself for the next presentation, discussion, paper or grant submission, project, system design ... This is one of the reasons why I love giving presentations and receiving comments and questions on them.

However, I cannot play pretend and put a positive spin on that personal comment even today. It was not ok. But was it really “I want to get out of here” bad? Would it make the same kind of impact on me today? Why did I have such a “thin skin” back then?

 

Earlier this year, I read (or audibled to be more exact) Roxane Gay’s Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People's Business.

Roxane Gay is one of my favorite authors. I once met her in Copenhagen airport. We were on the same flight. I saw her sitting in the waiting area of our gate, but no one else seemed to realize that she was there. I approached her and asked, “Are you Roxane Gay?”, to be sure. She confirmed. I told her that I really loved her writing. She thanked me and asked me for my name. Then, we shook hands. That was pretty much it. I preferred to keep the interaction brief, partly because I didn’t want to bother her in her private time and partly because I thought my heart was about to find its way out of my body based on the way it was pounding.

In Opinions, Roxane Gay writes about the “thinning of the skin”. Her argument is if a person or a group of people, such as minorities, are often subjected to comments or interactions that are hurtful or painful, their skin will become thinner. Hence, they will be more sensitive to any comment and may have more triggers. This argument contradicts the popular belief, at least the one I more often heard, that the more you face harsh comments or painful events the thicker your skin gets. She also questions the glorification of thick skin pointing out that thick skin implies the lack of feeling emotions.

 

This year, our department had its annual retreat in September, while I was in California for the HPTS workshop. In these retreats, we can propose to run a session on a topic we deem important such as well-being of PhD students, grant writing, finding collaborators ...

One of our colleagues, Louise Meier Carlsen, proposed to run a session on Advancing Gender Equality in (everyday) Academia. She asked the female faculty, postdocs, and PhD students to anonymously share some of the things we endured that can be put under categories such as harsher comments, dismissal, isolation, sexual behavior, etc. at work. Her goal was to avoid potential dismissive comments such as “these are isolated cases” by collecting data from a variety of women in the department.

On the last day of HPTS, I took some time to write about my experiences including the one from my first Dagstuhl workshop. I was grateful to Louise for running this session. It was helpful to write but also grim to realize that I could write so many things in such a short time. Similarly, it was both helpful and grim to read what others wrote.

 

Do I have thicker skin now compared to my pre-30s?

While I will never be a poster child for thick skin, I think the answer to this question is yes.

Did I develop that thicker skin because of all the shit I wrote about for Louise’s session? Or did I develop it thanks to all the people who supported or acknowledged me on the way making me realize that there are people who believe in and respect me regardless of those discouraging personal comments and interactions?

Before reading Opinions, I believed, somewhat uncomfortably, the former, because that is what I was taught by society, but the latter makes a lot more sense now.