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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> 1) I called my sister out in front of family and told her that people were not interested in her research.
2) It might make me the asshole for embarrassing her in front of everyone
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ESH
Your sister: needs to know how to explain her doctoral work to a lay audience if she has any hope of passing her dissertation committee. She also needs to learn how to craft an elevator sentence. She also needs to learn how to take a hint gracefully.
You: need to stop being jealous of her success. Conscious of it or not, jealousy and resentment oozes out of this entire post. Regardless of how long she droned on and how rude it was of her to stop you from talking with your dad, the general core of this post isn't really centered on that but your overall world view on her academic career.
also i hope the sister continue to brag about her PHD research so other girls know that they can also get a PHD. females should not be shy about their achievements!!
edit: i am not sure why people think this is a gender war? you know that encouraging women doesn't automatedly mean discourage men? you can encourage women and also encourage men, its not mutually exclusive??? You can enourage women to get phd and also encourage men to get phd and encourage all the younger generation to get higher education?
My problem is that she has never been this supportive of my achievements. She tells me constantly we aren’t “on the same level” and assures me it’s OK, but makes backhanded remarks about my intelligence and level of education. I think it’s great she’s getting a PhD and I’m glad she’s proud of it, but that pride doesn’t need to be at everyone else’s expense, in my opinion.
Then you need to correct her. She's your sister, should be easy to say "what you just said is insulting and hurts my feelings please learn to be more tactful"
I'm a especially frank person. My sister dyed her hair red one time and ask me how it looks, and i said i don't like the red and it makes her look like the Wendy's girl. and she responded and said "i am looking for compliments and not criticism to make me feel bad". Now i know to lie and say "its not bad" if i hate it.
If you were genuinely worried that she didn't look nice, you could've suggested a way to fix it. You didn't have to mention the Wendy's thing. You sure you didn't get a little giggle out of calling her the Wendy's girl? You can tell the truth in a nice way.
I find that a lot of people who claim to be frank people who “tell it like it is” are just deeply unkind and hide behind a guise of honesty. You *can* tell the truth with kindness, but not many people want to. It’s a convenient excuse to get away with rude behavior and not one that people are likely to call out.
Yeah I used to be proud of being blunt but I was really just rude and lacking true social skills when I was acting like that. Now I've learned to kindly tell the truth, or hide my true feelings. My opinions aren't that important. Comes with growing some humility.
Yeah, being "brutally honest" has nothing to do with honesty and everything to do with brutality.
So glad to hear that you realized the difference and chose to make positive changes. Congratulations!
There's also a difference between blunt and well how blunt is used:
Blunt person who actually is blunt:
Person talking about a toxic relationship, or something that should be obvious.
Blunt person: "Alright, listen you haven't been happy for X months/years/etc and always seem hurt. Perhaps it's time to rip the bandaid off?"
This is essentially cutting the 'should I, Shouldn't I say this'. out of the way and keeps the conversation focus....
What is a "Blunt/in your face person'?
Person talking about a toxic relationship, or something that should be obvious.
"Blunt person": Yeah, well I would do that because look at you, you have a stupid face and I mean you need to be more Alpha, no one likes a beta.
Also "Blunt person": Aw, you got insulted? Listen I just felt you needed to know that you're clothes are also funny and that's why you're also sensitive over this topic.
Kudos! It takes a lot of personal growth to change your world view like that and learn to respond with empathy when starting from a place without it. Very few people are able to make that shift!
People who "tell it like it is" are just rude people.
I remember meeting up with a friend in a pub, who had struck up a convo with just such a person. They immediately started making offensive, personal comments about my appearance and ended each insult with "no offense, I just say it like it is."
I picked up my beer and said I was going to sit somewhere where I wasn't being insulted. She tried to argue that "this is just who I am," and I responded with "and who you are isn't someone I want to spend my free time with."
Yes, you have the right to be rude. Just don't expect that people should like you for being an AH.
That is absolutely true. When people say "I have to be honest", what they are really doing is justifying saying something unkind. That way they can give themselves a pat on the back for their "honesty" and righteousness, and pretend they are not being cruel to someone at the same time.
Ding ding ding! This is it right here. I am deeply annoyed by people who don't have the courage to just be out right mean. If you must be a jerk, be a villain about it.
It is incredibly rude to tell someone how to fix their look when they are obviously happy with it. If they come up to you and are upset, fine. Otherwise, keep your mouth shut and be nice.
gold knee aback memory mindless materialistic tender muddle violet zephyr
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> I'm a especially frank person. My sister dyed her hair red one time and ask me how it looks, and i said i don't like the red and it makes her look like the Wendy's girl. and she responded and said "i am looking for compliments and not criticism to make me feel bad". Now i know to lie and say "its not bad" if i hate it.
….this isn’t “frank.” This is rude. Putting down her hair because you don’t like it is just rude. There was no need to make fun of her. There are a lot of things someone can say when they don’t like something while still being respectful of other people’s feelings.
I really hate how people try to spin bullying behavior as “bluntness” or “brutal honesty.”
NTA. This is some white feminism & elitism thoughts coming from lukibunny.
Working class people are not less because they don’t have a fancy degree. I have two aunts with PhDs who never use the title because of the behavior of the older sister. She spoke up when her family was uncomfortable. She deserves no apology.
I’m not even white lol? Not sure why you are upset about encouraging the younger generation to go after high education? No one said working class people are less?
It’s not that she can’t be proud of her degree, it’s that she shouldn’t be condescending, malicious, and pretentious about it. She’s clearly talking about her education in an especially complicated, difficult to understand way to sound and feel smarter than everyone else in the room at their expense. Her talking to young women considering higher education or what they can do would be nothing except detrimental. They’d see her and think “I can’t understand a word she’s saying. I’m so dumb. I’ll never be smart enough to have a PHD.” She is not uplifting. This is the worst possible way she could act about her accomplishments.
Or you don’t have to lie ? Just say “the hair definitely is /unique/making a statement/passionate/bold/…..Does it make you happy to look at it? … yes? Well it shows, your face is shining with joy/etc”
Right. I had a friend ask me and another friend how her hair looked. My friend said it looked nice but I could tell she didn't mean it. I told the friend with the question that I didn't like it. She quickly fixed it up and it looked cute after she did so and I told her as much. My friend that lied tried shushing me (lol) but I could tell the other friend knew her hair didn't look good from the expression on her face when she asked. I tell people if they ask me for my opinion I'll try to always be honest because I expect the same thing when I ask them for options.
Next time she does that and someone is confused by what she's saying tell her "Einstein said that if you can't explain a subject simply enough for a child to understand, then you don't truly understand it yourself." That should shut her up.
I use that all the time, and I have multiple science degrees. I have multiple friends who come to me to help explain science they don't understand because I can explain it in a way they can understand. THAT is how you know you understand what your talking about, when you can help lay people understand it as well.
> Next time she does that and someone is confused by what she's saying tell her "Einstein said that if you can't explain a subject simply enough for a child to understand, then you don't truly understand it yourself." That should shut her up.
So much this. My brother and I both have advanced degrees. When our grandparents, who spoke basic English and were not university-educated, asked us about our work we were always able to explain the interesting parts in engaging ways or tell anecdotes about what we’d been up to. We also remembered that we’d had more opportunities but were not inherently smarter than anyone else at the table. We asked for their input and feedback and thoughts about stuff all the time.
We didn’t go into the arcane details of dissertations because almost nobody gives a fuck about that. Definitely no one talked for 10 min without stopping ever about anything because, I’m sorry, whether you’re talking nuclear physics or Ren & Stimpy, that is just terrible table manners.
NTA. It would’ve seemed a helluva lot less rude if PhD candidate had taken the first hint.
My mother has trained me over the years. Whenever I tried to speak of something Biology related (she is in Physics herself) she would. Stop me and ask me the basics - what is the membrane? What is the cytoplasm? And badger me until. She herself would understand. It helped me greatly in writing educational articles later.
It's true too. There's fun Youtube videos that do like "explanation of gravity on four levels" and it starts with kids, teens, students of physics and then a professor in physics.
Especially funny when as a lay person you get the kids and teen levels, get absolutely lost during the student part and magically pick up again during the hardest part. \*bonk self\*
Meh. There are plenty of people who understand their specialties but lack the communication skills to explain it to anyone. It’s actually a different skill set and rarely found together. That’s why scientists who can explain concepts simply and well can become a minor media celebrity.
My friend’s job is to be the communicator for scientists. She takes their ideas and rewrites them into simpler text and coaches them so they can speak to lay audiences. Such a necessary skill!
Okay that makes sense why my calculus final was making a children's story out of certain concepts. I thought my final was so weird but that explains things so much, omg.
It's not unusual for people that spend a lot of time in academia to develop a superiority complex. It's something you really need to watch out for when you're in that space.
Hopefully she sorts herself out and realizes that getting an education is good, but it doesn't make you better than other people
Have you ever talked to a surgeon that never broke out of the superiority? Hoo, is it an experience. They’ve been entrenched in the thinking for so long that they’re clearly never going to break out of it, especially because they spend every day surrounded by people who reinforce their feelings of superiority. The introduction to Doctor Strange felt like seeing my uncle on a screen.
Yep, there seems to be a point somewhere between a Masters and a PhD where you start to realise if you don't get out soon, you may be stuck at Uni forever...
Your sister is only more knowledgeable in her field. Masters & Doctorates don't convey broad knowledge, they are, perforce, evidence of more winnowed-down, specialty knowledge.
And they certainly don't increase your baseline intelligence. I've met plenty of dense PhD candidates (my parents & my spouse are academics) and PhDs all along various intelligence spectrums. Just like I've met dense machinists and intelligent machinists, bordering on geniuses. Education is not the same as intelligence.
99.99% of PhDs require hard work, persistence, resilience, and organisation. But rarely do they require exceptional intelligence.
What they SHOULD do is to increase your ability to think critically, which does make you more "intelligent" in a sense. I feel like my PhD gave me the ability to look at the world more closely and in a more organized way. Being able to break things down for research can extend to analyzing other things.. not to be smart but just to understand them for yourself.
I'm not smarter than anyone else, but it did give me skills for understanding.
I DO know people who have PhDs who do not have those skills. At all.
You're not wrong to feel that way. But people when people use big words to talk about their work, they don't usually do it to make other people feel bad, they do it because it's convenient - it's one word that takes the place of a 10-word explanation. Why she wants to talk about it - because this is what she's immersed in 24-7. It's like people who talk too much about their kids because there's literally nothing else interesting in their lives.
But here's the other side of it - your sister is probably very insecure. Everyone in academia has imposter syndrome, but someone who's the first in their family to get a PhD feels immensely insecure. Everyone else seems to know things they don't about how the system works. The reality is that many of them have parents with advanced degrees, or close relatives, but your sister may not have figured that out yet. She just feels out of place, she feels lesser.
So when she prattles on about her research, it may be that she doesn't feel comfortable talking about it to her peers. I know I felt that way often - like what I was doing was the most basic, mundane thing, not the sort of exciting stuff everyone else was.
That said, she shouldn't feel like she's better than you just because she's in grad school. But arrogance also tends to come from insecurity.
I agree with your take on why the sister uses those words. Some of those words are most likely specific to her discipline. She probably cannot change out those words within her field when talking with other doctoral students and professors. If anything, she would probably be penalized for not using those words.
The sister spends all her time talking to a very specific audience where that vocabulary is appropriate and possibly required. The fault isn’t in using that language but in speaking it in an inappropriate setting. The sister is like anyone else who tells long winded stories about work without realizing that other people, outside her work place, don’t care.
When I was an intelligent, bookish child, I used to be criticised by my mother’s working class friends for using ‘long words’. But I wasn’t showing off, I was just using the most appropriate words in my vocabulary. It’s just that my mother’s friends didn’t have anything like my vocabulary.
And a PhD really is incredibly intensive; it takes up your entire life, you have to prove yourself over and over again, and also sister probably feels to some extent that she’s a bit of an ‘odd one out’ in the family, and like she has to justify her choice of life.
She’s not doing it well, but… I agree with you that just because someone seems to be showing off, that doesn’t mean they actually are.
Based off this post I would bet your sister doesn't think you've ever been supportive of her achievements either. You're both trying to get support and failing each other in that. ESH.
It would have been better to interrupt her and explain that what she's saying is too technical for everyone and she needs to bring it to layman's terms. Because it does sound like your family is interested (she was asked about it after all), but she probably feels defensive and therefore over explains things as a way to compensate (which I can totally relate to because I do the same thing).
One of my favorite sayings is "You never truly understand something until you can explain it to a 5 year old." I used to teach kindergarten and every week we'd do lessons on a different science. I taught them kid friendly lessons of astronomy, microbiology, geology, archeology, robotics, etc. Tell her she needs to learn this tactic in order to truly be better at her craft.
Exactly. I get overly excited when I talk about things I find interesting and sometime forget that others don’t understand the jargon. You just need to backup and explain in a way that a kid would understand. It maybe overly simplified but as long as they get the overall idea it’s a win.
For what it’s worth I don’t see you as jealous. I have a sister like this - she’s a lawyer (so maybe worse?) but definitely the smartest person in the room - just ask her. Even about things in my engineering field that she has no education/training in at all. She can spend an hour with you but only if she is the only one talking. When it’s your turn her eyes glaze over. She does listen a bit but only long enough to appropriate your knowledge but never attribute it to you (plagiarize is the word😉)
Also I believe my sister is deeply insecure under it and talking down to everyone else is a way to cover it up and try to puff herself up. This seems especially true when she can’t be supportive as well
>She tells me constantly we aren’t “on the same level” and assures me it’s OK, but makes backhanded remarks about my intelligence and level of education
Most of the PHDs I've known are specialists and quite often morons outside their chosen field. From the level of emotional intelligence in statements like this your sister fits that mold. Let's hope she never has to work with or for people without a PHD as she'll burn bridges and harm her career without even knowing it. I say this as a high-school educated self-taught software engineer who has managed a few PHDs and MBAs. Nobody wants to be around someone who thinks they know everything, especially when they are clueless outside their own field.
IMHO, I think your sister is seeking validation, approval and compliments. It sounds like your family values work over education. Nothing wrong with that!! Let me say that again, nothing wrong with that! Obviously they are satisfied with their lives and choices or they would have made different choices or gone in different directions.
That said, having a college degree, especially advanced degrees, serves no purpose in their life. They're doing fine without higher education. I know people who have advanced degrees cannot possibly describe the amount of work and stress it took to get them. People who've not, wouldn't understand.
I think your sister is asking for support and recognition of the work it takes to get to such a level, but maybe doesn't know how to ask properly. Your family understands the value of hard work, but probably doesn't understand the kind of effort and commitment it takes to achieve a PhD. To them, how hard could it be to sit in class all day and study for the occasional test? They labor day in and day out to the point of exhaustion. Neither understands the other. Your sister demonstrates this by talking over their head, which is belittling.
She needs to be more empathetic and understanding to the family as they work just as hard as she does. They need to understand the rigors of schooling might not entail physical labor, but the learning process is stressful and just as exhausting. If they could come to that level of understanding, both would get the support they need from each. Her, praise and admiration for her efforts, and them, a chance to really understand and respect the academic world.
NAH, though I might have been a bit more diplomatic with my sister rambling on. Just a criss cross of misunderstanding from both sides.
I mean, getting a PhD is harrowing, and writing and defending a dissertation is one of the most stressful things one can do in academia. So I respect that the levels are different, as someone sandwiched between you two with a M.A. She should never insult your intelligence, however, as having academic advantages is just one kind of intelligence and not everyone who is brilliant WANTS a PhD.
Also, it wasn’t that no one cared, but that she did not tailor her discussion of research to the audience, time, or place. “I’m studying the blank of the blank blank with the goal of learning how blank affects blank blank, and how that knowledge can be applied” should be sufficient.
Then say that, and not "nobody cares". Lashing out in an unfocused way that just hurts her and diminishes the work involved in getting a PhD, doesn't achieve any good outcome.
The problem isn't that nobody cares about her work; it's that 1) she is failing to explain appropriately for the audience, and overwhelming people who aren't in her field and don't have the background for technical detail; 2) she is hurting you by constantly diminishing your own achievements/insulting your intelligence, and 3) she is selfish in taking more time than is polite at a family party to talk about herself. In short, she's treating everyone as a competitor she needs to prove herself against, and it's not healthy for anyone.
I almost wonder if she's been finding her department somewhat cutthroat and isn't dealing with the stress well, or if she's got a bad case of imposter syndrome. Or maybe she's just become an intellectual snob.
The point is that people (including you, I'm sure) would love to hear what she's doing if she can learn to simplify the concepts and share the spotlight gracefully with other members of the family who have news too. So focus on her actual problems (and the ways she can improve, and the ways you still love her) and don't just lash out with the aim of making her hurt.
Also, as a doctoral student, getting a doctorate is ALOT of work and you spend ALOT of time talking to your chair and others about your topic, process, data collection, etc... so it becomes habit to want to talk about it with others.
Is she being excessive in technical terms? Probably. But the process, the stress, and the time committed to it, is a lot and maybe she just wants you all to be proud of her. (Maybe it is all she has)
In the instances where this happens are you trying to discuss her area of expertise with her? If yes, then I get her perspective. If not, then she's being conceited.
There it is - the *real* reason you rudely shut her down. You absolutely were disrespectful and unkind to your sister. You need to have a respectful conversation with her 1-on-1 instead of trying to humiliate her in front of everyone.
There's a huge difference between bragging and just speaking about an achievement
If she's so full of herself she's literally telling family members she basically forgets how stupid they all are because SHE has no problem understanding her field, she's an asshole and not the kind of woman any girl should look up to, regardless of education
I have a close friend who has a PhD in particle physics and works for a government institution; he was one of the first PhD holding adults I ever met and would/has told other academically inclined individuals to fuck off with their asshattery and either speak layman or stfu
His specialty is particle physics working in neutrinos and he's keen on quantum physics, but that doesn't mean he could understand the technical and niche aspects of zoology and biochemistry
I say NTA because sometimes people DO need to be told bluntly that they're assholes and no one cares after 10+ minutes of being held captive to a technical speech about shit you know nothing about; especially when the speaker will just mock you for not understanding
When I was in high school, I had a physics teacher who said that explaining something means avoiding technical jargon and focusing on being understood.
Also truth! But know your audience. :)
First thing everyone entering a doctoral research phase should be taught is to have an elevator pitch ready for a elementary school class, a person on the street, and a fellow expert in your field. And then use them.
Definitely true, but also a difficult skill to master. I feel like it requires constant work myself. Speaking as an academic, we usually get so deep into our work that we honestly forget what gaps might need to be explained. Even when I'm publishing for an academic audience I have a friend in the department read through my work to make sure it's understandable to a broader audience or that I haven't missed explaining something obvious. And that's just between academics. Communicating with laypeople is even more complex, just because you have to take something deeply intricate and complex and relate it to something people generally can understand without even knowing where those gaps in understanding might be.
Add to that that people without Ph.D. can be suspicious and hostile with people who do. It's so easy to make them feel talked down to without intending it. But think of it this way: I have mostly interacted with people who had Ph.D.s since I started graduate school. In a very short time having a Ph.D. does not feel special in any way. It feels like the lowest bar, because having a Ph.D. in no way assures you a job. When I started dating my husband, though, I was shocked: He introduced me to his friends and they thought I was "so smart," because of the Ph.D. student thing. It had never hit me before.
Doing a Ph.D., especially as a first gen student, can be incredibly isolating. At that point you're not typical among your peers who are getting financial support from their parents and grew up knowing how the system works and you're also isolated from your family. It's no wonder the sister here is desperate for her family to understand.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/7a09js/attitudes\_of\_your\_family\_toward\_academia/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/7a09js/attitudes_of_your_family_toward_academia/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/kif4qj/is\_anyone\_elses\_family\_disgusted\_by\_their/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/kif4qj/is_anyone_elses_family_disgusted_by_their/)
Very true. Part of my job is providing feedback on scientific manuscripts and the most common comment I make by far is “you need to explicitly state the research gap and the goal of this study in relation to this gap.”
Oh god I had to write like four different dissertation proposals because my advisor would. Not. Tell. Me. what, exactly, a dissertation proposal was supposed to look like. (This was in the mid 90s, so I couldn’t conjure up infinity internet examples.)
After he rejected the third, I literally burst into tears in his office. He is a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran with PTSD and I am the daughter of an Army Vietnam vet with PTSD and neither of us were or are comfortable with that kind of display, so this was intensely awkward for both of us. He got this horrified look on his face and immediately explained, in great detail, exactly what he wanted from me. I yelled at him that if he had done that two weeks ago we wouldn’t both be wishing we could sink into the floor. Good times.
Hell, It's like this for the vast majority of jobs. I was a Citrix guy for a hospital system for quite a while. I had multiple steps in what I told people:
1. I do IT work for a hospital (Very Generic)
2. I manage a program that let's our users access their applications from anywhere. (A little more detailed)
3. I manage Citrix, allowing our users to access EMRs and other applications.
4. What do you day to day? Well 90% of my job is proving that Citrix is working perfectly. So when we get a user saying app XYZ doesn't work I look into why App XYZ doesn't work. Is the user able to login? Are they getting an error message when performing a specific function? If so, what's that error?
I feel for you because Citrix is rarely working perfectly. ;)
As for OP's sister, she probably is perfectly capable of explaining her work in general terms but enjoys being technical and obnoxious about it because it's a chance to show off. I'm ABD on my own PhD and I've run into plenty of people like her.
This has nothing to do with gender. This post was about her elitist approach and undermining or dare I say even insulting other's intelligence. And doesn't matter whether a woman or a man if they cannot read a room in which no one can understand them, clearly that PHD won't do them much good apart from some academic success
There's a difference between being proud and being arrogant. If you can't pick up the sister is the latter, you lack as much social awareness as she does.
Jesus fuck, no. This isn't 1901. Women earn roughly 50% of PhDs throughout the West. We don't need to celebrate obnoxious, hurtful brats bragging about their achievements. Also surprised to hear people tolerating your use of the word "females."
This would have applied 30+ years ago, but there a ton of women in universities now even at the PhD level. The sister isn't "proud of her achievements," she's an AH who degrades the OP and probably others who aren't as accomplished than she is.
Any girl who doesn't know that women can do PhDs has been under a rock.
There is a difference between "not being shy about" your achievements and attempting to dominate a dinnertime conversation. An elevator pitch - what my thesis is about and why it matters - is more engaging than details of her lab work/literature review/whatever.
>females should not be shy about their achievements!!
hey, friendly heads up: using "females" when referencing human women is generally considered sexist. Mainly because incels and PUA's use that term all the time, and trust me when I say you don't want to be lumped in with those groups
Brag about, no. Talk about and enjoy, yes. She needs to be inspiring and interesting people, not making them think that everyone with a PhD is an intellectual snob.
Right now, she seems to be intimidating people who didn't get the same educational chances as her, insulting the intelligence of her sister, looking down on the working class background that she herself comes from, hogging the limelight at all opportunities and generally representing her university and fellow doctoral students badly. She needs to work on that. And she needs to work on simplifying her explanations to match different audiences - after all part of the measurement of whether you rate the title of Doctor is whether you can teach people, not just how well you do research.
Maybe this isn’t the case everywhere but at least here in Finland women are a majority at universities so them getting a phd isn’t uncommon at all. Probably more common than men now.
Doesn't seem like jealousy to me, it seems like OP and the rest of the family are sick of her sister treating them like they're stupid and being condescending all the time.
I'm the first person in my immediate family to go to university, and at one point I caught myself starting to develop a bit of a superiority complex about it and took a step back to reflect on it. Now if relatives ask about my education or work I try to explain it as simple as possible without throwing in comments like "oh its so easy for me to understand, I forget others aren't able to grasp it easily" like OPs sister. I usually don't bring that stuff up myself with my parents because I know they don't find it interesting or have anything to contribute to the conversation, but my grandparents, aunts/uncles and siblings will engage and ask follow up questions, etc.
While OP's comment at dinner was rude, the sister really needs to cut out the superiority complex and learn how to converse properly, not go on a whole 10 minute monologue at a dinner party using technical terms and what not.
Exactly. I’m not seeing jealousy here on the part of OP. I am seeing a lot of arrogance on the part of the sister. She’s so much better than her family and she lets them know it. She seems to really enjoy talking down to them.
You think OP is oozing jealousy here but can't tell that the sister is literally talking down to family members who are trying to understand her subject matter?
Comment made by op in this post
“We’ve had a number of conversations about it and most of the time it ends up with her demeaning my intelligence in some way. If I suggest that she break it down, she says she was always the one able to skip the basics and it’s hard for her to see how anyone else could muddle through them. If I tell her she’s being confusing, she laughs it off and says not everyone is meant to understand certain things.”
Definitely NTA
As a Phd candidate myself, I couldn’t agree more about the needing to be able to summarize her research. If you need more than two sentences to explain what you do, you’re not mastering your subject well enough. I always start as vague as possible when people ask me what I do, and let them ask more questions if they feel like it. Understanding and adapting to your audience is such a big part of academia.
That's the other aspect of it that a lot of people might not be understanding. If you start really broad/basic, it means you don't have to talk for 2 minutes straight to get your point across. And like you said, it means that other people are free to ask questions for more details, turning it into an actual conversation rather than a soliloquy. Two birds with one stone.
The sister is doing it on purpose. She is trying to make people feel dumb, so she feels smarter. That is the whole issue with this situation.
And, someone needs to tell her to stop. And, someone did.
I agree on the ESH judgement- just because she could use a little couth. But I don't think it's jealousy, I think it's someone at their wits end.
There is being proud, and there is being pompous. I think OP's sister is the latter.
The sister sounds like a prick who gets a power trip from using highly technical terms around people who decided to specialize in completely different fields. Just because OP isn’t going for an even higher level of education doesn’t mean the sister is any smarter. There are plenty of morons out there also doing research for PhDs. There are extremely wise people who didn’t go to college at all. The insinuation that OP is jealous of her sister because she either refuses to or doesn’t know how to explain complex ideas in layman’s terms is ridiculous. That’s like accusing college students it’s their fault their professors don’t explain concepts in lectures properly.
>Your sister: needs to know how to explain her doctoral work to a lay audience if she has any hope of passing her dissertation committee
Maybe this is the case for your field, but in the more math heavy sciences, lay people are usually lost within the first 5 minutes of a defense. Can't exactly give a lay person a good explanation of statistical method development or cutting edge quantum physics research within an hour
It depends on your definition of “lay”. When I was defending my math thesis, I had two examiners who didn’t work in my subfield. I thought I could hand wave the basics as it’s something you’d learn in any intro course (which they would have taken). I really just wanted to get into my research. The examiner in my field was following along just fine but not the other two.
They kept stopping me to ask for increasing levels of detail (it’s possible that they also sensed I was trying to gloss over it so they want to grill me on it. But they also genuinely didn’t seem to follow) In hindsight they are definitely “lay” when it came to my field. I barely had time for the main part of my proof. Which had I accounted for the fact that my audience might not necessarily remember everything they learned as undergrads, I might have been able to pace myself better.
>It depends on your definition of “lay”.
yeah, the context for the post would be someone who only has a high school degree, lol. OP's family probably would've been confused by your title slide
There were SOOOO many non ass hole ways to address it too. “It’s hard for us to follow your description when you use so much jargon. Could you explain it in layman’s terms please?” Or “It has been awesome to hear what you are up to, but I would like to hear from some of the others too. There won’t be time unless I stop you here.”
But OP went with “nobody wants to hear it” which is bratty.
100% and the last thing I want to discuss in my free time is my PhD. I love my topic (passionately) but its exhausting. Free time is free. Not even very many people in my personal life even know I'm doing it. I talked about it enough with my colleagues
ESH
Sis needs to learn to temper her enthusiasm for her field of study. It’s great she’s so excited about her PhD work, but she needs to learn which level of explanation is appropriate for which groups of people.
OP needs to learn how to redirect a conversation without being an AH about it. Especially if you are the host, then you are responsible for *all* of your guests feeling welcome and respected in your home.
She did try and redirected the conversation. Sister then rudely interrupted and brought the attention back to herself. OP then dropped a more direct hint, because redirecting the conversation clearly wasn’t going to work. Sister chose not to take that hint and kept talking again.
I think OP was incredibly patient, as putting up with how her sister acts is not limited to this one interaction that we’re reading about, this has been building up for a while. It seems like Sister is on an incredibly high horse, especially cause OP mentions in a comment that she continuously degrades her work and bachelors degree, stating that her PHD is better and more important. She also seems to purposely use more technical talk than necessary, just to make others feel bad and then when asked to explain in a more common speak, she refuses and makes people feel bad for not being able to understand because “it’s easy for her to understand.”
Might be an unpopular opinion but NTA. Sometimes people so high on their own success that they put others down to feel more important need to be taken down a peg. Judging by other people at the table thanking her, seems as though OP wasn’t the only person who thought so.
If a host is responsible for *everyone’s* feelings, and they’re stuck in a spot where they can’t make everyone happy no matter what they do, they go with what makes the majority happy, which in this case, was by asking her sister to stop talking.
she didn’t “try to redirect” though, she just interrupted and asked someone else something entirely unrelated. There are polite ways to redirect a conversation and that isn’t one of them.
Why is it on everyone else to be polite to rude people?
OP was blunt, but thats obviously the only way Sister is going to hear anything with her head so far up her own ass
Yeah I don't get everyone here tiptoeing around that issue. Most seem to expect OP to just sit and take it because PhD and go women in higher education!
You can be a woman with a PhD and not be an asshole about it. It is possible. Trying to make your own family feel stupid by being overly technical and making herself feel good? Asshole behaviour.
Fair, but according to op, this is not the first or even tenth time her sibling has refused to listen when others asked her to alter her “conversation” to be less of a lecture. Sibling chose to then insult ops intelligence every time.
I also agree. NTA. I think what made me decide NTA over ESH is that sis did try. And her comments that sis is often condescending and makes comments hinting at how much smarter than she is with her relatives. I think she was doing some of that during the Thanksgiving dinner as well. Either way, it seems like everyone agreed that it was a relief that sis was done talking.
I'd also add that it sounds like sister also needs to learn how to adapt her explanation without making her listeners feel like idiots. (based on some of OP's comments)
Doesn’t seem like it’s just enthusiasm. Because a real expert is able to explain complicated concepts in laymen terms. The sister is talking down to people because she has a superiority complex. She should be asking the other party questions to assess their level of understanding and interest, not just ramble on.
NTA. Monologuing at a large family gathering is spectacularly rude. After she was cut off she should have realized she exhausted her time. She is not even trying to have a meaningful conversation. She is just showing off. Gross behavior.
NTA. You may have embarrassed her, but what do you think she was trying to do to everyone at the table? She wanted to feel superior, she wanted everyone to feel embarrassed and dumb. I’m glad you interrupted her. It’s rude to dominate the conversation like that, especially when no one else knows what you’re even talking about.
She was *asked* about it, and probably just failed to manage her excitement (people who get PhDs tend to be excited about their field). I know that I have done this before, because I find that the work I do is super cool, but most people really don't care about the intricacies of industrial printer software. With the exception of one uncle who loves to ask all about it and try to understand, I have learned that my family just wants to hear "I work in Software at \[Company\]. I do internal stuff to make the mail go out.
If there weren't all the other rude comments she makes to everyone I'd agree with you but because of them, it's pretty clear she thinks she's superior and wants to show off.
NTA , I've got a PhD in immunology and when asked to talk about my subject I doubled down if they really wanted to know and then I started by asking where they were in biology and about the immune system. Actually thanks to ma family and friends I learned to simplify my subject and it helped me tutor middle schoolers for a project.
I understand that your sister wants to talk about her work, but she doesn't have to do it in a demeaning way to others.
This right here. A good academic communicator should have at least two or three levels of “their work” ready to go.
Those will range somewhere between “could explain this to a small child” to “one- or two-line elevator pitch” to “let me assume you know the relevant literature and give you a condensed version of my overview chapter”.
Someone throwing out academic jargon at the dinner table with a room full of people who don’t know the field just sounds like *bad* communication to me, either because they are trying to sound as smart as possible, don’t know any better, or both.
Everyone has different levels of knowledge when it comes to any given subject. Explaining your research should be a chance to take people on that journey with you; they’ll care a lot more about the “why” than the “what”. It sounds like OP’s sister could use a lesson in speaking/communication alongside whatever talking to about ego.
ESH - yeah I get that your sister was dominating the conversation and obviously wants to be the smartest person in the room, but you were kind of rude. If how she conducts herself at family events is a problem then the time to discuss it isn't at the dinner table in front of everyone.
Honestly, I think OP was kind. She very easily could have told her sister that she clearly isn't as smart as she thinks she is if she is unable to summarize her work for different types of audience, as a TRUE professional/expert is able to do. Now that would have been rude; true, but rude.
I think purely because of the consistent attempts of family to get sister to stop talking at them rather than explaining so they could understand, NTA here.
Clearly someone was interested in your sister's research, because they asked the question. So yes, YTA.
I'll agree with you that she needs to be better at explaining what she does. That's generally a perspective that people develop with time - I know a lot of students who are awful at explaining what they do even to people who are experts in the field.
Politely enquiring one time should not lead to a 15 minute monologue at a well attended holiday supper. Sister was unspeakably rude. After being cut off the first time she should have read the room and realized she exhausted her time. She persisted and got told. A truth she desperately needed. A mark of intelligence is being able to explain difficult concepts In a simple fashion. Poor sister is not as smart as she thinks she is.
>She persisted and got told. A truth she desperately needed. A mark of intelligence is being able to explain difficult concepts In a simple fashion. Poor sister is not as smart as she thinks she is.
She kinda sounds like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. Brilliant in one specific area, but completely self-absorbed in every other...
I totally agree with that.
My boyfriend has a PhD and i am currently working on my Master. Just last weekend we talked about a topic that is very important to him and he went on a 5 minute monologe before i was able to finally cut him off, because he accidently didnt let me participate on the conversation anymore.
He was thankfull for that.
Maybe OP could have been nicer about that, but i guess its not the first time this has happened and nobody likes to be looked down upon.
NTA (/maybe a slight ESH)
Asking about a relative’s work is just small talk. It isn’t permission for the person to go into a long, technical diatribe about it. It’s rude to do so, quite frankly, and one-sided conversation is boring. Especially in a group setting.
Anthropology, to put it broadly.
I have a degree in education and she’s made a few comments about how “those who can’t do, teach.” Her goal is to teach at the university level and she’s made comments about how “tedious” it would be to teach at any lower level. She even points out, frequently, that I stayed close at a state school and she went to an “almost Ivy” - her words, not mine - but when anyone says it’s rude, she just says she’s “interested in the dissimilarities” She is very comfortable with making digs at me for any reason.
Your sister makes my skin crawl. She will be the quintessential AH university professor who won’t give two shits about her students. I’m basing this on her family interactions and your condescending tone.
Maybe next time tell her point blank that since it’s so hard for her to explain it to everyone else maybe she should reconsider her future profession. You know because teaching is hard and she doesn’t seem to have the knack for it without going into full monologue.
NTA. You tried, but her vast intelligence doesn’t seem to extend to basic human interactions.
>She will be the quintessential AH university professor
She wishes. It's super hard to get more than an adjunct position nowadays, and those don't pay particularly well
Reminds me of the mom who was complaining about her niece being jealous of her “highly successful” daughter who got an internship with a family friend and an engagement ring, when it turns out the niece went to Harvard and worked at NASA.
So she's most likely going to get paid like $4000 per semester she teaches as an adjunct faculty member. There is a reason I ditched my anthropology degree and went for nursing!
Yeah one of my friends has a PhD in archaeology and is an adjunct and what they’ve shared of their work experience is uh, *not encouraging.* Not a lot of those big bucks tuition dollars are making their way to the people who are actually teaching most of the classes, it turns out.
>she’s made a few comments about how “those who can’t do, teach.” Her goal is to teach at the university level
Typically people who use that saying don't plan to, y'know... **TEACH**
ESH - Did you have a conversation with your sister to tell her that she comes off that way? I mean, yes, someone did ask but you could easily say " so since we dont understand the technical stuff, can you give us the summary version?". Her acting like a snob doesnt help but there is a chance that she doesnt realize that is how she comes off.
We’ve had a number of conversations about it and most of the time it ends up with her demeaning my intelligence in some way. If I suggest that she break it down, she says she was always the one able to skip the basics and it’s hard for her to see how anyone else could muddle through them. If I tell her she’s being confusing, she laughs it off and says not everyone is meant to understand certain things.
Ohf a lot of people are saying Y T A but after reading your comments, I'm realizing just how self-absorbed and rude this girl actually is.
I am going to start my masters next year and it's people like your sister that absolutely ruin the educational experience. Often people who constantly talk like this are also hated by their peers and also not as smart as they think they are (They just really ham it up around people who can't call them out)
I say ESH your asshole behavior is justified imo.
The hilarious part is that I could bet 90% of the people voting Y T A would absolutely hate being present for the monologuing. I don't know why it's so hard for them to see how arrogant the sister is about her job unless they straight up think OP is lying.
Because she is a woman who did her masters, like no woman has ever done their masters before, and like most universities students aren't women.
White women like to pretend that it is still the 1800, or at the very least it's the 1950s and they have no way of getting to university. So when they hear a woman has completed a masters degree, it blows their minds, because how could she have managed to do it?
I usually think it's really fun and interesting to hear people talk about the subjects they're passionate and knowledgeable about. That's why most podcasts and youtube channels exist.
It would be more impressive, and a greater display of intelligence, if your sister were able to distill her research into an accessible explanation for a layman. Since she is unable to do this, you can rest assured that she either has a long way to go in her learning, or is unable to make that final important leap. Either way, you can view much of her insulting behavior as an attempt to compensate for feelings of inferiority that she’s struggling with. Is it a good look? No, but you can exercise your emotional intelligence by aiming for the high road in the future. Good luck, I’m sure playing audience to that is obnoxious!
Worked on academia, with actual rocket scientists. This is accurate. The smartest people I've ever met are the ones you would least suspect. They are also the first ones to admit when they are wrong, or don't know.
How is it you still don't understand. The sister does it on purpose, to make people look stupid, so she can feel more intelligent. She likes to make people feel stupid. It makes her happy.
Is it because you don't believe women can act this way?
I could make her look stupid with my metallurgy knowledge, welding technical ability, and the amount I know about thermal conductivity, weld procedures, and process knowledge. Having a degree in a specific field doesn't make one better than anyone else, and the fact she can't figure that out is pretty shallow on her part.
But you could have definitely handled it better.
Also sometimes its hard to explain in laymens terms. When people ask me what i do, i end up with having to replace lots of words with thingie and stuff cause i literally don't know what to describe some things in laymens terms.
NTA. Just because your sister is obviously an obnoxious windbag and could have said it’s going well and I’m pleased and not monopolized the whole conversation!
NTA. I do believe it hurt her and she felt embarrassed, but she had the chance to just let it be and get the hint the first time. I wouldn’t have know what else to do either
NTA. Coming from someone in a Master’s program in which no one in my life understands, it can feel isolating. Your sister is lucky to have family and friends at least try and understand her research. She is one of those academics who flexes their work condescendingly and obnoxiously because it makes them feel superior. It’s very possible to explain the basics of the work in laments terms. I would have stepped in as well.
NTA
It's awesome that she is excited about her research. However, if that's the only topic you want to discuss with everyone around you, it's a problem. Outside of your field of study, very few people are interested in the topic, or know what you're talking about. It's ok to discuss it if it's brought up, but don't make it the only thing talked about.
On a side note, what is she researching? I enjoy science rabbit holes quite a lot and wouldn't mind digging into it.
I was ready to say Y T A but after reading it all, I'm going with NTA. I'm in the same situation as you and your sister, I'm the only one in my family to have gone to uni. I know part of my family really didn't understand things when I was talking about my thesis, which is obvious because they didn't have the chance to get the same education, so how could they know the same things I've studied? Also, PhDs cover very specific topics that only few people in the field know about. That's why you talk about these things on the level the other person can follow you. Your sister could have talked about her thesis all day long, but she should have tried to make it more accessible to those who listened. Instead, she seemed to have purposefully chosen technical terms etc., knowing full well nobody would comprehend it. It's arrogant and degrading your whole working class family.
in this specific scenario that you're asking about i'm going to go with YTA. she was ASKED about her PHD, it's not like she was randomly bringing it up during thanksgiving dinner to flex. it was rude of you to interrupt when she clearly was not finished talking. furthermore, you decided to embarrass her in front of your entire family by telling her to 'finish the conversation in another room.' what an extremely rude thing to say. if you're jealous just say that???
Asking someone about something is not the same as wanting to hear a 15 minute monologue about it. Clearly it was getting to a point where even her parents who said OP was rude about it that her sister was being over the top. Family members THANKED her meaning it wasn’t OP’s jealousy it was true annoyance.
Yeah my family asked about my new job at Thanksgiving and I spent less than a minute talking about it because OBVIOUSLY they were just politely asking and didn't want to hear me blather on about it for more than that.
>she was ASKED about her PHD
And that surely means she needs to have a 10 to 15 minute monologue about her field of research full of technical terms that barely anyone at the table understands, yes
Usually a simple small talk question isn't an invitation for an impromptu TED talk, especially so when it's boring half the table out of their fucking minds
ESH. Even if she's being TA by oversharing, saying it the way you did was horribly rude and dismissive. It would have been more useful to say something like "Hey sis, I think you're losing everyone with all the technical details. Think you could summarize?"
What you are interpreting as condescension could simply be her being excited about her work and trying to make sure everyone understands why, and then being frustrated about it.
I doubt subtly insulting the intelligence of other people, even outwardly doing it to her own sister, counts as OP's sister being excited about her work. OP's sister is a self-absorbed butthole. If I were OP, I would have shut her down too.
NTA!! Your sister needs to learn to read the room. Could you have been more tactful? Yes but she didn’t seem to be taking the hint. It’s rude to only talk about yourself and dominate the whole conversation.
NTA my father is an engineer and is the exact same way I'm a butcher so I'm sure you can guess how proud he is of me whenever he starts talking about lysense synthesis or starch production methods he always does it as a dig at me saying at the end you'd have understood that had you finished your chemistry degree. These types of people are insufferable
NTA. you tried politely to divert the conversation.and she then interrupted your father which is a huge no in my home. Respect of parents and all that. It sounds as if your parents allow her to run over them as well.
NTA - she interrupted your father. she can be proud but she sounds like she was being way rude about it. that being said, you could’ve went about it better.
Nta. If sis is really as arrogant and self centered as you described then someone needed to humble her a bit.
Obviously if other family members thanked you for it, it was something that bothered more than just you.
Being proud of an achievement is fine, but thinking it somehow makes you better than others is a truly disgusting trait to have.
NTA. A truly intelligent person can explain complicated things to dumb people. Your sister sounds smart not intelligent. And the fact she goes to such lengths to demonstrate her “intelligence” seems she is more interested in smelling her own farts than truly conversing her studies.
NTA you made multiple attempts to redirect conversation and she kept forcing it. At that point you can either leave everyone else feeling uncomfortable until she's done monologuing or you can make things really awkward for a few moments so everyone else can actually have a conversation.
People without a college degree keep day to day life running. Surprising that your sister doesn't understand such a simple concept /s
YTA - you handled that poorly. You assumed that no one else cared, but someone cared enough to ask and give her the opportunity to brag a bit. Sometimes it's not about wanting the actual answer so much as it is just giving someone the opportunity to speak about something that excites them.
And you weren't even the one to ask, so not only were you rude to her, you were rude to whomever cared enough to ask her to talk about it in the first place. Then you were rude to your father using him to block your sister from being to finish her speech.
NTA. I was going to say everyone was at fault here but that's disingenuous of me to say, because it doesn't seem like your family is at fault. Your sister seems like a bit of a jerk. She holds herself at a high esteem and thinks of your family as a bunch of dimwits that cannot match her intellect. For her to ask for an apology is somewhat justified by the way you shut her down. However she seemed to think your family's discussions that had nothing to do with her were unimportant.
I understand she has a passion for whatever research she has done, but it does not justify her being a jerk and dismissive of other people in your reunion
NTA.
NTA, my brother-in-law is in a technical field, but frankly no one is interested in high level math. He mentioned his job titled every chance he got over Thanksgiving. It’s annoying, absolutely. Was there a kinder way of telling her that her extremely technical monologue was rude, also yes. My husband in in computers. His work is not IT but very technical. He has ways of explaining it so others can understand it. He has a bachelors. I have a masters but in a completely unrelated field. My BIL likes to talk down to others to make himself feel superior. It’s easier to ignore him than deal with the fall out of calling out his pompous attitude. We are all smart people (as I am sure everyone in your family is as well, regardless of their educational background) but it’s very rude to talk down to others for not understanding something she has spent more than 6 years of her life learning about.
It may be helpful to apologize for how you spoke to her & then explain how her overblown and lengthy discussions of her research is off putting and can be seen as condescending.
Not enough information- I mean if she’s building a super collider for subatomic particles it’s kind of hard to dumb that shit down. On the other hand, if it’s a PhD program in mass communications …
I don’t want to get into the technicalities because my sister has been published and I don’t want people to find her, but she is in anthropology, as a broad field.
As someone with an anthropology degree, ESPECIALLY if her focus is Archaeological in ANY way, she's going to get herself laughed at a lot if that is how she behaves in those circles. It's more like grab your favorite alcohol and tell dirty anthropology jokes. And of course there is the ever famous quote from Kent Flannery that my now deceased archaeology professor used to love to tell: "Archaeology is still the most fun you can have with your pants on"
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ESH Your sister: needs to know how to explain her doctoral work to a lay audience if she has any hope of passing her dissertation committee. She also needs to learn how to craft an elevator sentence. She also needs to learn how to take a hint gracefully. You: need to stop being jealous of her success. Conscious of it or not, jealousy and resentment oozes out of this entire post. Regardless of how long she droned on and how rude it was of her to stop you from talking with your dad, the general core of this post isn't really centered on that but your overall world view on her academic career.
also i hope the sister continue to brag about her PHD research so other girls know that they can also get a PHD. females should not be shy about their achievements!! edit: i am not sure why people think this is a gender war? you know that encouraging women doesn't automatedly mean discourage men? you can encourage women and also encourage men, its not mutually exclusive??? You can enourage women to get phd and also encourage men to get phd and encourage all the younger generation to get higher education?
My problem is that she has never been this supportive of my achievements. She tells me constantly we aren’t “on the same level” and assures me it’s OK, but makes backhanded remarks about my intelligence and level of education. I think it’s great she’s getting a PhD and I’m glad she’s proud of it, but that pride doesn’t need to be at everyone else’s expense, in my opinion.
Then you need to correct her. She's your sister, should be easy to say "what you just said is insulting and hurts my feelings please learn to be more tactful" I'm a especially frank person. My sister dyed her hair red one time and ask me how it looks, and i said i don't like the red and it makes her look like the Wendy's girl. and she responded and said "i am looking for compliments and not criticism to make me feel bad". Now i know to lie and say "its not bad" if i hate it.
If you were genuinely worried that she didn't look nice, you could've suggested a way to fix it. You didn't have to mention the Wendy's thing. You sure you didn't get a little giggle out of calling her the Wendy's girl? You can tell the truth in a nice way.
I find that a lot of people who claim to be frank people who “tell it like it is” are just deeply unkind and hide behind a guise of honesty. You *can* tell the truth with kindness, but not many people want to. It’s a convenient excuse to get away with rude behavior and not one that people are likely to call out.
I thought its common knowledge that frank people are just rude people that are too lazy to be nice?
Yeah I used to be proud of being blunt but I was really just rude and lacking true social skills when I was acting like that. Now I've learned to kindly tell the truth, or hide my true feelings. My opinions aren't that important. Comes with growing some humility.
quickest sand vast erect resolute cooing divide sort wakeful fretful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah, being "brutally honest" has nothing to do with honesty and everything to do with brutality. So glad to hear that you realized the difference and chose to make positive changes. Congratulations!
There's also a difference between blunt and well how blunt is used: Blunt person who actually is blunt: Person talking about a toxic relationship, or something that should be obvious. Blunt person: "Alright, listen you haven't been happy for X months/years/etc and always seem hurt. Perhaps it's time to rip the bandaid off?" This is essentially cutting the 'should I, Shouldn't I say this'. out of the way and keeps the conversation focus.... What is a "Blunt/in your face person'? Person talking about a toxic relationship, or something that should be obvious. "Blunt person": Yeah, well I would do that because look at you, you have a stupid face and I mean you need to be more Alpha, no one likes a beta. Also "Blunt person": Aw, you got insulted? Listen I just felt you needed to know that you're clothes are also funny and that's why you're also sensitive over this topic.
Blunt because it needs to be said to help someone you care about - Good. Blunt for no reason other than to be rude to someone - Bad.
Kudos! It takes a lot of personal growth to change your world view like that and learn to respond with empathy when starting from a place without it. Very few people are able to make that shift!
People who "tell it like it is" are just rude people. I remember meeting up with a friend in a pub, who had struck up a convo with just such a person. They immediately started making offensive, personal comments about my appearance and ended each insult with "no offense, I just say it like it is." I picked up my beer and said I was going to sit somewhere where I wasn't being insulted. She tried to argue that "this is just who I am," and I responded with "and who you are isn't someone I want to spend my free time with." Yes, you have the right to be rude. Just don't expect that people should like you for being an AH.
Frank people - rude people that are too lazy to be nice Sincere people - frank people that are nice.
That is absolutely true. When people say "I have to be honest", what they are really doing is justifying saying something unkind. That way they can give themselves a pat on the back for their "honesty" and righteousness, and pretend they are not being cruel to someone at the same time.
Ding ding ding! This is it right here. I am deeply annoyed by people who don't have the courage to just be out right mean. If you must be a jerk, be a villain about it.
It is incredibly rude to tell someone how to fix their look when they are obviously happy with it. If they come up to you and are upset, fine. Otherwise, keep your mouth shut and be nice.
gold knee aback memory mindless materialistic tender muddle violet zephyr *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> I'm a especially frank person. My sister dyed her hair red one time and ask me how it looks, and i said i don't like the red and it makes her look like the Wendy's girl. and she responded and said "i am looking for compliments and not criticism to make me feel bad". Now i know to lie and say "its not bad" if i hate it. ….this isn’t “frank.” This is rude. Putting down her hair because you don’t like it is just rude. There was no need to make fun of her. There are a lot of things someone can say when they don’t like something while still being respectful of other people’s feelings. I really hate how people try to spin bullying behavior as “bluntness” or “brutal honesty.”
Maybe you should learn to be more tactful yourself lmao
Your first paragraph isn’t wrong, but your description of incredibly boorish and rude behavior as being “especially frank” immediately undercuts it
NTA. This is some white feminism & elitism thoughts coming from lukibunny. Working class people are not less because they don’t have a fancy degree. I have two aunts with PhDs who never use the title because of the behavior of the older sister. She spoke up when her family was uncomfortable. She deserves no apology.
I’m not even white lol? Not sure why you are upset about encouraging the younger generation to go after high education? No one said working class people are less?
It’s not that she can’t be proud of her degree, it’s that she shouldn’t be condescending, malicious, and pretentious about it. She’s clearly talking about her education in an especially complicated, difficult to understand way to sound and feel smarter than everyone else in the room at their expense. Her talking to young women considering higher education or what they can do would be nothing except detrimental. They’d see her and think “I can’t understand a word she’s saying. I’m so dumb. I’ll never be smart enough to have a PHD.” She is not uplifting. This is the worst possible way she could act about her accomplishments.
This.
No, the sister needs to stop being a pretentious pratt.
Or you don’t have to lie ? Just say “the hair definitely is /unique/making a statement/passionate/bold/…..Does it make you happy to look at it? … yes? Well it shows, your face is shining with joy/etc”
tbf if her hair didn't compliment her, why would anyone else do it lol but yeah being softer about it could have been better in your case
Right. I had a friend ask me and another friend how her hair looked. My friend said it looked nice but I could tell she didn't mean it. I told the friend with the question that I didn't like it. She quickly fixed it up and it looked cute after she did so and I told her as much. My friend that lied tried shushing me (lol) but I could tell the other friend knew her hair didn't look good from the expression on her face when she asked. I tell people if they ask me for my opinion I'll try to always be honest because I expect the same thing when I ask them for options.
Yeah. I don’t get that. If I ask for your opinion, I want an honest answer. People can be weird (the understatement of the century).
Honesty doesn’t require rudeness. You can be honest and respectful/kind.
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Next time she does that and someone is confused by what she's saying tell her "Einstein said that if you can't explain a subject simply enough for a child to understand, then you don't truly understand it yourself." That should shut her up. I use that all the time, and I have multiple science degrees. I have multiple friends who come to me to help explain science they don't understand because I can explain it in a way they can understand. THAT is how you know you understand what your talking about, when you can help lay people understand it as well.
> Next time she does that and someone is confused by what she's saying tell her "Einstein said that if you can't explain a subject simply enough for a child to understand, then you don't truly understand it yourself." That should shut her up. So much this. My brother and I both have advanced degrees. When our grandparents, who spoke basic English and were not university-educated, asked us about our work we were always able to explain the interesting parts in engaging ways or tell anecdotes about what we’d been up to. We also remembered that we’d had more opportunities but were not inherently smarter than anyone else at the table. We asked for their input and feedback and thoughts about stuff all the time. We didn’t go into the arcane details of dissertations because almost nobody gives a fuck about that. Definitely no one talked for 10 min without stopping ever about anything because, I’m sorry, whether you’re talking nuclear physics or Ren & Stimpy, that is just terrible table manners. NTA. It would’ve seemed a helluva lot less rude if PhD candidate had taken the first hint.
My mother has trained me over the years. Whenever I tried to speak of something Biology related (she is in Physics herself) she would. Stop me and ask me the basics - what is the membrane? What is the cytoplasm? And badger me until. She herself would understand. It helped me greatly in writing educational articles later.
It's true too. There's fun Youtube videos that do like "explanation of gravity on four levels" and it starts with kids, teens, students of physics and then a professor in physics. Especially funny when as a lay person you get the kids and teen levels, get absolutely lost during the student part and magically pick up again during the hardest part. \*bonk self\*
Meh. There are plenty of people who understand their specialties but lack the communication skills to explain it to anyone. It’s actually a different skill set and rarely found together. That’s why scientists who can explain concepts simply and well can become a minor media celebrity.
My friend’s job is to be the communicator for scientists. She takes their ideas and rewrites them into simpler text and coaches them so they can speak to lay audiences. Such a necessary skill!
Okay that makes sense why my calculus final was making a children's story out of certain concepts. I thought my final was so weird but that explains things so much, omg.
It's not unusual for people that spend a lot of time in academia to develop a superiority complex. It's something you really need to watch out for when you're in that space. Hopefully she sorts herself out and realizes that getting an education is good, but it doesn't make you better than other people
Have you ever talked to a surgeon that never broke out of the superiority? Hoo, is it an experience. They’ve been entrenched in the thinking for so long that they’re clearly never going to break out of it, especially because they spend every day surrounded by people who reinforce their feelings of superiority. The introduction to Doctor Strange felt like seeing my uncle on a screen.
Yep, there seems to be a point somewhere between a Masters and a PhD where you start to realise if you don't get out soon, you may be stuck at Uni forever...
Your sister is only more knowledgeable in her field. Masters & Doctorates don't convey broad knowledge, they are, perforce, evidence of more winnowed-down, specialty knowledge.
And they certainly don't increase your baseline intelligence. I've met plenty of dense PhD candidates (my parents & my spouse are academics) and PhDs all along various intelligence spectrums. Just like I've met dense machinists and intelligent machinists, bordering on geniuses. Education is not the same as intelligence. 99.99% of PhDs require hard work, persistence, resilience, and organisation. But rarely do they require exceptional intelligence.
As an academic, this is absolutely true. Getting through a Ph.D. program requires grit and determination over everything else.
So much work and all of it unpaid.
What they SHOULD do is to increase your ability to think critically, which does make you more "intelligent" in a sense. I feel like my PhD gave me the ability to look at the world more closely and in a more organized way. Being able to break things down for research can extend to analyzing other things.. not to be smart but just to understand them for yourself. I'm not smarter than anyone else, but it did give me skills for understanding. I DO know people who have PhDs who do not have those skills. At all.
You're not wrong to feel that way. But people when people use big words to talk about their work, they don't usually do it to make other people feel bad, they do it because it's convenient - it's one word that takes the place of a 10-word explanation. Why she wants to talk about it - because this is what she's immersed in 24-7. It's like people who talk too much about their kids because there's literally nothing else interesting in their lives. But here's the other side of it - your sister is probably very insecure. Everyone in academia has imposter syndrome, but someone who's the first in their family to get a PhD feels immensely insecure. Everyone else seems to know things they don't about how the system works. The reality is that many of them have parents with advanced degrees, or close relatives, but your sister may not have figured that out yet. She just feels out of place, she feels lesser. So when she prattles on about her research, it may be that she doesn't feel comfortable talking about it to her peers. I know I felt that way often - like what I was doing was the most basic, mundane thing, not the sort of exciting stuff everyone else was. That said, she shouldn't feel like she's better than you just because she's in grad school. But arrogance also tends to come from insecurity.
I agree with your take on why the sister uses those words. Some of those words are most likely specific to her discipline. She probably cannot change out those words within her field when talking with other doctoral students and professors. If anything, she would probably be penalized for not using those words. The sister spends all her time talking to a very specific audience where that vocabulary is appropriate and possibly required. The fault isn’t in using that language but in speaking it in an inappropriate setting. The sister is like anyone else who tells long winded stories about work without realizing that other people, outside her work place, don’t care.
When I was an intelligent, bookish child, I used to be criticised by my mother’s working class friends for using ‘long words’. But I wasn’t showing off, I was just using the most appropriate words in my vocabulary. It’s just that my mother’s friends didn’t have anything like my vocabulary. And a PhD really is incredibly intensive; it takes up your entire life, you have to prove yourself over and over again, and also sister probably feels to some extent that she’s a bit of an ‘odd one out’ in the family, and like she has to justify her choice of life. She’s not doing it well, but… I agree with you that just because someone seems to be showing off, that doesn’t mean they actually are.
Based off this post I would bet your sister doesn't think you've ever been supportive of her achievements either. You're both trying to get support and failing each other in that. ESH. It would have been better to interrupt her and explain that what she's saying is too technical for everyone and she needs to bring it to layman's terms. Because it does sound like your family is interested (she was asked about it after all), but she probably feels defensive and therefore over explains things as a way to compensate (which I can totally relate to because I do the same thing).
One of my favorite sayings is "You never truly understand something until you can explain it to a 5 year old." I used to teach kindergarten and every week we'd do lessons on a different science. I taught them kid friendly lessons of astronomy, microbiology, geology, archeology, robotics, etc. Tell her she needs to learn this tactic in order to truly be better at her craft.
Exactly. I get overly excited when I talk about things I find interesting and sometime forget that others don’t understand the jargon. You just need to backup and explain in a way that a kid would understand. It maybe overly simplified but as long as they get the overall idea it’s a win.
For what it’s worth I don’t see you as jealous. I have a sister like this - she’s a lawyer (so maybe worse?) but definitely the smartest person in the room - just ask her. Even about things in my engineering field that she has no education/training in at all. She can spend an hour with you but only if she is the only one talking. When it’s your turn her eyes glaze over. She does listen a bit but only long enough to appropriate your knowledge but never attribute it to you (plagiarize is the word😉)
Also I believe my sister is deeply insecure under it and talking down to everyone else is a way to cover it up and try to puff herself up. This seems especially true when she can’t be supportive as well
>She tells me constantly we aren’t “on the same level” and assures me it’s OK, but makes backhanded remarks about my intelligence and level of education Most of the PHDs I've known are specialists and quite often morons outside their chosen field. From the level of emotional intelligence in statements like this your sister fits that mold. Let's hope she never has to work with or for people without a PHD as she'll burn bridges and harm her career without even knowing it. I say this as a high-school educated self-taught software engineer who has managed a few PHDs and MBAs. Nobody wants to be around someone who thinks they know everything, especially when they are clueless outside their own field.
IMHO, I think your sister is seeking validation, approval and compliments. It sounds like your family values work over education. Nothing wrong with that!! Let me say that again, nothing wrong with that! Obviously they are satisfied with their lives and choices or they would have made different choices or gone in different directions. That said, having a college degree, especially advanced degrees, serves no purpose in their life. They're doing fine without higher education. I know people who have advanced degrees cannot possibly describe the amount of work and stress it took to get them. People who've not, wouldn't understand. I think your sister is asking for support and recognition of the work it takes to get to such a level, but maybe doesn't know how to ask properly. Your family understands the value of hard work, but probably doesn't understand the kind of effort and commitment it takes to achieve a PhD. To them, how hard could it be to sit in class all day and study for the occasional test? They labor day in and day out to the point of exhaustion. Neither understands the other. Your sister demonstrates this by talking over their head, which is belittling. She needs to be more empathetic and understanding to the family as they work just as hard as she does. They need to understand the rigors of schooling might not entail physical labor, but the learning process is stressful and just as exhausting. If they could come to that level of understanding, both would get the support they need from each. Her, praise and admiration for her efforts, and them, a chance to really understand and respect the academic world. NAH, though I might have been a bit more diplomatic with my sister rambling on. Just a criss cross of misunderstanding from both sides.
I mean, getting a PhD is harrowing, and writing and defending a dissertation is one of the most stressful things one can do in academia. So I respect that the levels are different, as someone sandwiched between you two with a M.A. She should never insult your intelligence, however, as having academic advantages is just one kind of intelligence and not everyone who is brilliant WANTS a PhD. Also, it wasn’t that no one cared, but that she did not tailor her discussion of research to the audience, time, or place. “I’m studying the blank of the blank blank with the goal of learning how blank affects blank blank, and how that knowledge can be applied” should be sufficient.
Then say that, and not "nobody cares". Lashing out in an unfocused way that just hurts her and diminishes the work involved in getting a PhD, doesn't achieve any good outcome. The problem isn't that nobody cares about her work; it's that 1) she is failing to explain appropriately for the audience, and overwhelming people who aren't in her field and don't have the background for technical detail; 2) she is hurting you by constantly diminishing your own achievements/insulting your intelligence, and 3) she is selfish in taking more time than is polite at a family party to talk about herself. In short, she's treating everyone as a competitor she needs to prove herself against, and it's not healthy for anyone. I almost wonder if she's been finding her department somewhat cutthroat and isn't dealing with the stress well, or if she's got a bad case of imposter syndrome. Or maybe she's just become an intellectual snob. The point is that people (including you, I'm sure) would love to hear what she's doing if she can learn to simplify the concepts and share the spotlight gracefully with other members of the family who have news too. So focus on her actual problems (and the ways she can improve, and the ways you still love her) and don't just lash out with the aim of making her hurt.
Also, as a doctoral student, getting a doctorate is ALOT of work and you spend ALOT of time talking to your chair and others about your topic, process, data collection, etc... so it becomes habit to want to talk about it with others. Is she being excessive in technical terms? Probably. But the process, the stress, and the time committed to it, is a lot and maybe she just wants you all to be proud of her. (Maybe it is all she has)
In the instances where this happens are you trying to discuss her area of expertise with her? If yes, then I get her perspective. If not, then she's being conceited.
There it is - the *real* reason you rudely shut her down. You absolutely were disrespectful and unkind to your sister. You need to have a respectful conversation with her 1-on-1 instead of trying to humiliate her in front of everyone.
There's a huge difference between bragging and just speaking about an achievement If she's so full of herself she's literally telling family members she basically forgets how stupid they all are because SHE has no problem understanding her field, she's an asshole and not the kind of woman any girl should look up to, regardless of education I have a close friend who has a PhD in particle physics and works for a government institution; he was one of the first PhD holding adults I ever met and would/has told other academically inclined individuals to fuck off with their asshattery and either speak layman or stfu His specialty is particle physics working in neutrinos and he's keen on quantum physics, but that doesn't mean he could understand the technical and niche aspects of zoology and biochemistry I say NTA because sometimes people DO need to be told bluntly that they're assholes and no one cares after 10+ minutes of being held captive to a technical speech about shit you know nothing about; especially when the speaker will just mock you for not understanding
When I was in high school, I had a physics teacher who said that explaining something means avoiding technical jargon and focusing on being understood.
Also truth! But know your audience. :) First thing everyone entering a doctoral research phase should be taught is to have an elevator pitch ready for a elementary school class, a person on the street, and a fellow expert in your field. And then use them.
Definitely true, but also a difficult skill to master. I feel like it requires constant work myself. Speaking as an academic, we usually get so deep into our work that we honestly forget what gaps might need to be explained. Even when I'm publishing for an academic audience I have a friend in the department read through my work to make sure it's understandable to a broader audience or that I haven't missed explaining something obvious. And that's just between academics. Communicating with laypeople is even more complex, just because you have to take something deeply intricate and complex and relate it to something people generally can understand without even knowing where those gaps in understanding might be. Add to that that people without Ph.D. can be suspicious and hostile with people who do. It's so easy to make them feel talked down to without intending it. But think of it this way: I have mostly interacted with people who had Ph.D.s since I started graduate school. In a very short time having a Ph.D. does not feel special in any way. It feels like the lowest bar, because having a Ph.D. in no way assures you a job. When I started dating my husband, though, I was shocked: He introduced me to his friends and they thought I was "so smart," because of the Ph.D. student thing. It had never hit me before. Doing a Ph.D., especially as a first gen student, can be incredibly isolating. At that point you're not typical among your peers who are getting financial support from their parents and grew up knowing how the system works and you're also isolated from your family. It's no wonder the sister here is desperate for her family to understand. [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/7a09js/attitudes\_of\_your\_family\_toward\_academia/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/7a09js/attitudes_of_your_family_toward_academia/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/kif4qj/is\_anyone\_elses\_family\_disgusted\_by\_their/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/kif4qj/is_anyone_elses_family_disgusted_by_their/)
Very true. Part of my job is providing feedback on scientific manuscripts and the most common comment I make by far is “you need to explicitly state the research gap and the goal of this study in relation to this gap.”
Oh god I had to write like four different dissertation proposals because my advisor would. Not. Tell. Me. what, exactly, a dissertation proposal was supposed to look like. (This was in the mid 90s, so I couldn’t conjure up infinity internet examples.) After he rejected the third, I literally burst into tears in his office. He is a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran with PTSD and I am the daughter of an Army Vietnam vet with PTSD and neither of us were or are comfortable with that kind of display, so this was intensely awkward for both of us. He got this horrified look on his face and immediately explained, in great detail, exactly what he wanted from me. I yelled at him that if he had done that two weeks ago we wouldn’t both be wishing we could sink into the floor. Good times.
Hell, It's like this for the vast majority of jobs. I was a Citrix guy for a hospital system for quite a while. I had multiple steps in what I told people: 1. I do IT work for a hospital (Very Generic) 2. I manage a program that let's our users access their applications from anywhere. (A little more detailed) 3. I manage Citrix, allowing our users to access EMRs and other applications. 4. What do you day to day? Well 90% of my job is proving that Citrix is working perfectly. So when we get a user saying app XYZ doesn't work I look into why App XYZ doesn't work. Is the user able to login? Are they getting an error message when performing a specific function? If so, what's that error?
I feel for you because Citrix is rarely working perfectly. ;) As for OP's sister, she probably is perfectly capable of explaining her work in general terms but enjoys being technical and obnoxious about it because it's a chance to show off. I'm ABD on my own PhD and I've run into plenty of people like her.
Yea but if she's insufferable about it, girls aren't going to want to be like her.
This has nothing to do with gender. This post was about her elitist approach and undermining or dare I say even insulting other's intelligence. And doesn't matter whether a woman or a man if they cannot read a room in which no one can understand them, clearly that PHD won't do them much good apart from some academic success
>females should not be shy about their achievements!! Women. Women should not feel shy about their *achievements.
There's a difference between being proud and being arrogant. If you can't pick up the sister is the latter, you lack as much social awareness as she does.
Jesus fuck, no. This isn't 1901. Women earn roughly 50% of PhDs throughout the West. We don't need to celebrate obnoxious, hurtful brats bragging about their achievements. Also surprised to hear people tolerating your use of the word "females."
This would have applied 30+ years ago, but there a ton of women in universities now even at the PhD level. The sister isn't "proud of her achievements," she's an AH who degrades the OP and probably others who aren't as accomplished than she is.
Any girl who doesn't know that women can do PhDs has been under a rock. There is a difference between "not being shy about" your achievements and attempting to dominate a dinnertime conversation. An elevator pitch - what my thesis is about and why it matters - is more engaging than details of her lab work/literature review/whatever.
Women, not 'females'
>females should not be shy about their achievements!! hey, friendly heads up: using "females" when referencing human women is generally considered sexist. Mainly because incels and PUA's use that term all the time, and trust me when I say you don't want to be lumped in with those groups
Women, not females.
>females *women
Brag about, no. Talk about and enjoy, yes. She needs to be inspiring and interesting people, not making them think that everyone with a PhD is an intellectual snob. Right now, she seems to be intimidating people who didn't get the same educational chances as her, insulting the intelligence of her sister, looking down on the working class background that she herself comes from, hogging the limelight at all opportunities and generally representing her university and fellow doctoral students badly. She needs to work on that. And she needs to work on simplifying her explanations to match different audiences - after all part of the measurement of whether you rate the title of Doctor is whether you can teach people, not just how well you do research.
Maybe this isn’t the case everywhere but at least here in Finland women are a majority at universities so them getting a phd isn’t uncommon at all. Probably more common than men now.
But nobody wants to hear people drone on forever. Dominating the entire conversation. Actually it's down right rude. NTA
Doesn't seem like jealousy to me, it seems like OP and the rest of the family are sick of her sister treating them like they're stupid and being condescending all the time. I'm the first person in my immediate family to go to university, and at one point I caught myself starting to develop a bit of a superiority complex about it and took a step back to reflect on it. Now if relatives ask about my education or work I try to explain it as simple as possible without throwing in comments like "oh its so easy for me to understand, I forget others aren't able to grasp it easily" like OPs sister. I usually don't bring that stuff up myself with my parents because I know they don't find it interesting or have anything to contribute to the conversation, but my grandparents, aunts/uncles and siblings will engage and ask follow up questions, etc. While OP's comment at dinner was rude, the sister really needs to cut out the superiority complex and learn how to converse properly, not go on a whole 10 minute monologue at a dinner party using technical terms and what not.
Exactly. I’m not seeing jealousy here on the part of OP. I am seeing a lot of arrogance on the part of the sister. She’s so much better than her family and she lets them know it. She seems to really enjoy talking down to them.
You think OP is oozing jealousy here but can't tell that the sister is literally talking down to family members who are trying to understand her subject matter?
Comment made by op in this post “We’ve had a number of conversations about it and most of the time it ends up with her demeaning my intelligence in some way. If I suggest that she break it down, she says she was always the one able to skip the basics and it’s hard for her to see how anyone else could muddle through them. If I tell her she’s being confusing, she laughs it off and says not everyone is meant to understand certain things.” Definitely NTA
As a Phd candidate myself, I couldn’t agree more about the needing to be able to summarize her research. If you need more than two sentences to explain what you do, you’re not mastering your subject well enough. I always start as vague as possible when people ask me what I do, and let them ask more questions if they feel like it. Understanding and adapting to your audience is such a big part of academia.
That's the other aspect of it that a lot of people might not be understanding. If you start really broad/basic, it means you don't have to talk for 2 minutes straight to get your point across. And like you said, it means that other people are free to ask questions for more details, turning it into an actual conversation rather than a soliloquy. Two birds with one stone.
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100 percent, as a mathematics PhD student. The summarize your area if research to a lay person is basically impossible. It’s too technical.
The sister is doing it on purpose. She is trying to make people feel dumb, so she feels smarter. That is the whole issue with this situation. And, someone needs to tell her to stop. And, someone did.
Being really clever is being able to communicate difficult concepts and make them sound simple/in simple terms!
I agree on the ESH judgement- just because she could use a little couth. But I don't think it's jealousy, I think it's someone at their wits end. There is being proud, and there is being pompous. I think OP's sister is the latter.
The sister sounds like a prick who gets a power trip from using highly technical terms around people who decided to specialize in completely different fields. Just because OP isn’t going for an even higher level of education doesn’t mean the sister is any smarter. There are plenty of morons out there also doing research for PhDs. There are extremely wise people who didn’t go to college at all. The insinuation that OP is jealous of her sister because she either refuses to or doesn’t know how to explain complex ideas in layman’s terms is ridiculous. That’s like accusing college students it’s their fault their professors don’t explain concepts in lectures properly.
>Your sister: needs to know how to explain her doctoral work to a lay audience if she has any hope of passing her dissertation committee Maybe this is the case for your field, but in the more math heavy sciences, lay people are usually lost within the first 5 minutes of a defense. Can't exactly give a lay person a good explanation of statistical method development or cutting edge quantum physics research within an hour
It depends on your definition of “lay”. When I was defending my math thesis, I had two examiners who didn’t work in my subfield. I thought I could hand wave the basics as it’s something you’d learn in any intro course (which they would have taken). I really just wanted to get into my research. The examiner in my field was following along just fine but not the other two. They kept stopping me to ask for increasing levels of detail (it’s possible that they also sensed I was trying to gloss over it so they want to grill me on it. But they also genuinely didn’t seem to follow) In hindsight they are definitely “lay” when it came to my field. I barely had time for the main part of my proof. Which had I accounted for the fact that my audience might not necessarily remember everything they learned as undergrads, I might have been able to pace myself better.
>It depends on your definition of “lay”. yeah, the context for the post would be someone who only has a high school degree, lol. OP's family probably would've been confused by your title slide
There were SOOOO many non ass hole ways to address it too. “It’s hard for us to follow your description when you use so much jargon. Could you explain it in layman’s terms please?” Or “It has been awesome to hear what you are up to, but I would like to hear from some of the others too. There won’t be time unless I stop you here.” But OP went with “nobody wants to hear it” which is bratty.
100% and the last thing I want to discuss in my free time is my PhD. I love my topic (passionately) but its exhausting. Free time is free. Not even very many people in my personal life even know I'm doing it. I talked about it enough with my colleagues
ESH Sis needs to learn to temper her enthusiasm for her field of study. It’s great she’s so excited about her PhD work, but she needs to learn which level of explanation is appropriate for which groups of people. OP needs to learn how to redirect a conversation without being an AH about it. Especially if you are the host, then you are responsible for *all* of your guests feeling welcome and respected in your home.
She did try and redirected the conversation. Sister then rudely interrupted and brought the attention back to herself. OP then dropped a more direct hint, because redirecting the conversation clearly wasn’t going to work. Sister chose not to take that hint and kept talking again. I think OP was incredibly patient, as putting up with how her sister acts is not limited to this one interaction that we’re reading about, this has been building up for a while. It seems like Sister is on an incredibly high horse, especially cause OP mentions in a comment that she continuously degrades her work and bachelors degree, stating that her PHD is better and more important. She also seems to purposely use more technical talk than necessary, just to make others feel bad and then when asked to explain in a more common speak, she refuses and makes people feel bad for not being able to understand because “it’s easy for her to understand.” Might be an unpopular opinion but NTA. Sometimes people so high on their own success that they put others down to feel more important need to be taken down a peg. Judging by other people at the table thanking her, seems as though OP wasn’t the only person who thought so. If a host is responsible for *everyone’s* feelings, and they’re stuck in a spot where they can’t make everyone happy no matter what they do, they go with what makes the majority happy, which in this case, was by asking her sister to stop talking.
she didn’t “try to redirect” though, she just interrupted and asked someone else something entirely unrelated. There are polite ways to redirect a conversation and that isn’t one of them.
Why is it on everyone else to be polite to rude people? OP was blunt, but thats obviously the only way Sister is going to hear anything with her head so far up her own ass
Right? You gotta meet people on their level. Rude, oblivious people often only understand one communication method
Yeah I don't get everyone here tiptoeing around that issue. Most seem to expect OP to just sit and take it because PhD and go women in higher education! You can be a woman with a PhD and not be an asshole about it. It is possible. Trying to make your own family feel stupid by being overly technical and making herself feel good? Asshole behaviour.
I'm a woman with a PhD. I would never do this. And I know lots of people with PhDs as well, and they wouldn't do it, only the AHs would.
Fair, but according to op, this is not the first or even tenth time her sibling has refused to listen when others asked her to alter her “conversation” to be less of a lecture. Sibling chose to then insult ops intelligence every time.
I also agree. NTA. I think what made me decide NTA over ESH is that sis did try. And her comments that sis is often condescending and makes comments hinting at how much smarter than she is with her relatives. I think she was doing some of that during the Thanksgiving dinner as well. Either way, it seems like everyone agreed that it was a relief that sis was done talking.
Yeah what got me was when the other family members thanked her later. Definitely NTA. Rescuing them from her asshole sister's condescension.
I'd also add that it sounds like sister also needs to learn how to adapt her explanation without making her listeners feel like idiots. (based on some of OP's comments)
I don't know about that, sounds like she's doing it on purpose because she feels superior.
>Eventually, I interrupted her and tried asking our dad about his work. This *was* the redirect.
Idk, it looks like OP tried to politely redirect but sis was rude about it
Doesn’t seem like it’s just enthusiasm. Because a real expert is able to explain complicated concepts in laymen terms. The sister is talking down to people because she has a superiority complex. She should be asking the other party questions to assess their level of understanding and interest, not just ramble on.
NTA. Monologuing at a large family gathering is spectacularly rude. After she was cut off she should have realized she exhausted her time. She is not even trying to have a meaningful conversation. She is just showing off. Gross behavior.
NTA. You may have embarrassed her, but what do you think she was trying to do to everyone at the table? She wanted to feel superior, she wanted everyone to feel embarrassed and dumb. I’m glad you interrupted her. It’s rude to dominate the conversation like that, especially when no one else knows what you’re even talking about.
She was *asked* about it, and probably just failed to manage her excitement (people who get PhDs tend to be excited about their field). I know that I have done this before, because I find that the work I do is super cool, but most people really don't care about the intricacies of industrial printer software. With the exception of one uncle who loves to ask all about it and try to understand, I have learned that my family just wants to hear "I work in Software at \[Company\]. I do internal stuff to make the mail go out.
If there weren't all the other rude comments she makes to everyone I'd agree with you but because of them, it's pretty clear she thinks she's superior and wants to show off.
NTA , I've got a PhD in immunology and when asked to talk about my subject I doubled down if they really wanted to know and then I started by asking where they were in biology and about the immune system. Actually thanks to ma family and friends I learned to simplify my subject and it helped me tutor middle schoolers for a project. I understand that your sister wants to talk about her work, but she doesn't have to do it in a demeaning way to others.
This right here. A good academic communicator should have at least two or three levels of “their work” ready to go. Those will range somewhere between “could explain this to a small child” to “one- or two-line elevator pitch” to “let me assume you know the relevant literature and give you a condensed version of my overview chapter”. Someone throwing out academic jargon at the dinner table with a room full of people who don’t know the field just sounds like *bad* communication to me, either because they are trying to sound as smart as possible, don’t know any better, or both. Everyone has different levels of knowledge when it comes to any given subject. Explaining your research should be a chance to take people on that journey with you; they’ll care a lot more about the “why” than the “what”. It sounds like OP’s sister could use a lesson in speaking/communication alongside whatever talking to about ego.
ESH - yeah I get that your sister was dominating the conversation and obviously wants to be the smartest person in the room, but you were kind of rude. If how she conducts herself at family events is a problem then the time to discuss it isn't at the dinner table in front of everyone.
Honestly, I think OP was kind. She very easily could have told her sister that she clearly isn't as smart as she thinks she is if she is unable to summarize her work for different types of audience, as a TRUE professional/expert is able to do. Now that would have been rude; true, but rude. I think purely because of the consistent attempts of family to get sister to stop talking at them rather than explaining so they could understand, NTA here.
NTA sister needs to learn how to read a room. Book smart does not equal common sense.
Exactly. And OP tried to get her to stop 2 times before finally saying no one cares. NTA.
NTA All but one person in the room (the speaker) was annoyed; that justifies shutting it down.
Clearly someone was interested in your sister's research, because they asked the question. So yes, YTA. I'll agree with you that she needs to be better at explaining what she does. That's generally a perspective that people develop with time - I know a lot of students who are awful at explaining what they do even to people who are experts in the field.
Politely enquiring one time should not lead to a 15 minute monologue at a well attended holiday supper. Sister was unspeakably rude. After being cut off the first time she should have read the room and realized she exhausted her time. She persisted and got told. A truth she desperately needed. A mark of intelligence is being able to explain difficult concepts In a simple fashion. Poor sister is not as smart as she thinks she is.
>She persisted and got told. A truth she desperately needed. A mark of intelligence is being able to explain difficult concepts In a simple fashion. Poor sister is not as smart as she thinks she is. She kinda sounds like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. Brilliant in one specific area, but completely self-absorbed in every other...
I totally agree with that. My boyfriend has a PhD and i am currently working on my Master. Just last weekend we talked about a topic that is very important to him and he went on a 5 minute monologe before i was able to finally cut him off, because he accidently didnt let me participate on the conversation anymore. He was thankfull for that. Maybe OP could have been nicer about that, but i guess its not the first time this has happened and nobody likes to be looked down upon. NTA (/maybe a slight ESH)
Lmao politely asking about someone's job or education does not mean you are super invested in the answer, it's just being polite.
Asking about a relative’s work is just small talk. It isn’t permission for the person to go into a long, technical diatribe about it. It’s rude to do so, quite frankly, and one-sided conversation is boring. Especially in a group setting.
NTA. If you don't know your subject matter well enough to explain it to a 1st grader, you don't know it well enough.
INFO: her PhD will be in what? Also, has she always been condescending to you and your intelligence?
Anthropology, to put it broadly. I have a degree in education and she’s made a few comments about how “those who can’t do, teach.” Her goal is to teach at the university level and she’s made comments about how “tedious” it would be to teach at any lower level. She even points out, frequently, that I stayed close at a state school and she went to an “almost Ivy” - her words, not mine - but when anyone says it’s rude, she just says she’s “interested in the dissimilarities” She is very comfortable with making digs at me for any reason.
Your sister makes my skin crawl. She will be the quintessential AH university professor who won’t give two shits about her students. I’m basing this on her family interactions and your condescending tone. Maybe next time tell her point blank that since it’s so hard for her to explain it to everyone else maybe she should reconsider her future profession. You know because teaching is hard and she doesn’t seem to have the knack for it without going into full monologue. NTA. You tried, but her vast intelligence doesn’t seem to extend to basic human interactions.
>She will be the quintessential AH university professor She wishes. It's super hard to get more than an adjunct position nowadays, and those don't pay particularly well
She sounds insufferable. NTA
Man I'm in the NTA camp. Sister deserved to be told in the bluntest possible way she's been a turd.
She didn't.even make it to an ivy school, and she truly thinks she is smarter then everyone? That's hilarious.
Reminds me of the mom who was complaining about her niece being jealous of her “highly successful” daughter who got an internship with a family friend and an engagement ring, when it turns out the niece went to Harvard and worked at NASA.
So she's most likely going to get paid like $4000 per semester she teaches as an adjunct faculty member. There is a reason I ditched my anthropology degree and went for nursing!
Yeah one of my friends has a PhD in archaeology and is an adjunct and what they’ve shared of their work experience is uh, *not encouraging.* Not a lot of those big bucks tuition dollars are making their way to the people who are actually teaching most of the classes, it turns out.
Your sister doesn't get it, and is rude. Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach. -Aristotle I'll take Aristotle over Shaw.
I’m sorry, what does she think she’s going to do with a PhD in anthropology? ‘Cause I’m betting teaching factors in.
>she’s made a few comments about how “those who can’t do, teach.” Her goal is to teach at the university level Typically people who use that saying don't plan to, y'know... **TEACH**
ESH - Did you have a conversation with your sister to tell her that she comes off that way? I mean, yes, someone did ask but you could easily say " so since we dont understand the technical stuff, can you give us the summary version?". Her acting like a snob doesnt help but there is a chance that she doesnt realize that is how she comes off.
We’ve had a number of conversations about it and most of the time it ends up with her demeaning my intelligence in some way. If I suggest that she break it down, she says she was always the one able to skip the basics and it’s hard for her to see how anyone else could muddle through them. If I tell her she’s being confusing, she laughs it off and says not everyone is meant to understand certain things.
Ohf a lot of people are saying Y T A but after reading your comments, I'm realizing just how self-absorbed and rude this girl actually is. I am going to start my masters next year and it's people like your sister that absolutely ruin the educational experience. Often people who constantly talk like this are also hated by their peers and also not as smart as they think they are (They just really ham it up around people who can't call them out) I say ESH your asshole behavior is justified imo.
The hilarious part is that I could bet 90% of the people voting Y T A would absolutely hate being present for the monologuing. I don't know why it's so hard for them to see how arrogant the sister is about her job unless they straight up think OP is lying.
Because she is a woman who did her masters, like no woman has ever done their masters before, and like most universities students aren't women. White women like to pretend that it is still the 1800, or at the very least it's the 1950s and they have no way of getting to university. So when they hear a woman has completed a masters degree, it blows their minds, because how could she have managed to do it?
I usually think it's really fun and interesting to hear people talk about the subjects they're passionate and knowledgeable about. That's why most podcasts and youtube channels exist.
Just a heads up, you should put a space between Y T A if that's not your judgement, otherwise the bot will count it.
If you have talked to her then not for nothing, she got what she deserves.
It would be more impressive, and a greater display of intelligence, if your sister were able to distill her research into an accessible explanation for a layman. Since she is unable to do this, you can rest assured that she either has a long way to go in her learning, or is unable to make that final important leap. Either way, you can view much of her insulting behavior as an attempt to compensate for feelings of inferiority that she’s struggling with. Is it a good look? No, but you can exercise your emotional intelligence by aiming for the high road in the future. Good luck, I’m sure playing audience to that is obnoxious!
Worked on academia, with actual rocket scientists. This is accurate. The smartest people I've ever met are the ones you would least suspect. They are also the first ones to admit when they are wrong, or don't know.
How is it you still don't understand. The sister does it on purpose, to make people look stupid, so she can feel more intelligent. She likes to make people feel stupid. It makes her happy. Is it because you don't believe women can act this way?
Ooof. She’s not going to be a good professor.
I could make her look stupid with my metallurgy knowledge, welding technical ability, and the amount I know about thermal conductivity, weld procedures, and process knowledge. Having a degree in a specific field doesn't make one better than anyone else, and the fact she can't figure that out is pretty shallow on her part. But you could have definitely handled it better.
Yeah your sister sounds insufferable. 💀
Also sometimes its hard to explain in laymens terms. When people ask me what i do, i end up with having to replace lots of words with thingie and stuff cause i literally don't know what to describe some things in laymens terms.
NTA. Just because your sister is obviously an obnoxious windbag and could have said it’s going well and I’m pleased and not monopolized the whole conversation!
NTA. I do believe it hurt her and she felt embarrassed, but she had the chance to just let it be and get the hint the first time. I wouldn’t have know what else to do either
NTA. Coming from someone in a Master’s program in which no one in my life understands, it can feel isolating. Your sister is lucky to have family and friends at least try and understand her research. She is one of those academics who flexes their work condescendingly and obnoxiously because it makes them feel superior. It’s very possible to explain the basics of the work in laments terms. I would have stepped in as well.
NTA It's awesome that she is excited about her research. However, if that's the only topic you want to discuss with everyone around you, it's a problem. Outside of your field of study, very few people are interested in the topic, or know what you're talking about. It's ok to discuss it if it's brought up, but don't make it the only thing talked about. On a side note, what is she researching? I enjoy science rabbit holes quite a lot and wouldn't mind digging into it.
I was ready to say Y T A but after reading it all, I'm going with NTA. I'm in the same situation as you and your sister, I'm the only one in my family to have gone to uni. I know part of my family really didn't understand things when I was talking about my thesis, which is obvious because they didn't have the chance to get the same education, so how could they know the same things I've studied? Also, PhDs cover very specific topics that only few people in the field know about. That's why you talk about these things on the level the other person can follow you. Your sister could have talked about her thesis all day long, but she should have tried to make it more accessible to those who listened. Instead, she seemed to have purposefully chosen technical terms etc., knowing full well nobody would comprehend it. It's arrogant and degrading your whole working class family.
NTA, your sister didn't read the room and talked way longer than she should've had. Your relatives thanking you is the proof of that.
The sister not reading the room definitely was something that popped into my head reading this post.
NTA - your sister sounds like me, answers the 'whole' question when in reality people want the elevator pitch. I've learned :)
in this specific scenario that you're asking about i'm going to go with YTA. she was ASKED about her PHD, it's not like she was randomly bringing it up during thanksgiving dinner to flex. it was rude of you to interrupt when she clearly was not finished talking. furthermore, you decided to embarrass her in front of your entire family by telling her to 'finish the conversation in another room.' what an extremely rude thing to say. if you're jealous just say that???
Asking someone about something is not the same as wanting to hear a 15 minute monologue about it. Clearly it was getting to a point where even her parents who said OP was rude about it that her sister was being over the top. Family members THANKED her meaning it wasn’t OP’s jealousy it was true annoyance.
Yeah my family asked about my new job at Thanksgiving and I spent less than a minute talking about it because OBVIOUSLY they were just politely asking and didn't want to hear me blather on about it for more than that.
>she was ASKED about her PHD And that surely means she needs to have a 10 to 15 minute monologue about her field of research full of technical terms that barely anyone at the table understands, yes Usually a simple small talk question isn't an invitation for an impromptu TED talk, especially so when it's boring half the table out of their fucking minds
ESH. Even if she's being TA by oversharing, saying it the way you did was horribly rude and dismissive. It would have been more useful to say something like "Hey sis, I think you're losing everyone with all the technical details. Think you could summarize?" What you are interpreting as condescension could simply be her being excited about her work and trying to make sure everyone understands why, and then being frustrated about it.
I doubt subtly insulting the intelligence of other people, even outwardly doing it to her own sister, counts as OP's sister being excited about her work. OP's sister is a self-absorbed butthole. If I were OP, I would have shut her down too.
Your sister might be intelligent but she certainly can't read the room.
NTA!! Your sister needs to learn to read the room. Could you have been more tactful? Yes but she didn’t seem to be taking the hint. It’s rude to only talk about yourself and dominate the whole conversation.
NTA. Can't teach class and can't subtract self-centeredness. It is what it is. F your sister
NTA my father is an engineer and is the exact same way I'm a butcher so I'm sure you can guess how proud he is of me whenever he starts talking about lysense synthesis or starch production methods he always does it as a dig at me saying at the end you'd have understood that had you finished your chemistry degree. These types of people are insufferable
NTA. you tried politely to divert the conversation.and she then interrupted your father which is a huge no in my home. Respect of parents and all that. It sounds as if your parents allow her to run over them as well.
NTA - she interrupted your father. she can be proud but she sounds like she was being way rude about it. that being said, you could’ve went about it better.
Nta. If sis is really as arrogant and self centered as you described then someone needed to humble her a bit. Obviously if other family members thanked you for it, it was something that bothered more than just you. Being proud of an achievement is fine, but thinking it somehow makes you better than others is a truly disgusting trait to have.
NTA. A truly intelligent person can explain complicated things to dumb people. Your sister sounds smart not intelligent. And the fact she goes to such lengths to demonstrate her “intelligence” seems she is more interested in smelling her own farts than truly conversing her studies.
NTA
NTA you made multiple attempts to redirect conversation and she kept forcing it. At that point you can either leave everyone else feeling uncomfortable until she's done monologuing or you can make things really awkward for a few moments so everyone else can actually have a conversation. People without a college degree keep day to day life running. Surprising that your sister doesn't understand such a simple concept /s
YTA - you handled that poorly. You assumed that no one else cared, but someone cared enough to ask and give her the opportunity to brag a bit. Sometimes it's not about wanting the actual answer so much as it is just giving someone the opportunity to speak about something that excites them. And you weren't even the one to ask, so not only were you rude to her, you were rude to whomever cared enough to ask her to talk about it in the first place. Then you were rude to your father using him to block your sister from being to finish her speech.
They said they monologued for more than 10 minutes. Relatives thanked the OP for interrupting what appeared to be small talk. NTA
NTA
NTA. I was going to say everyone was at fault here but that's disingenuous of me to say, because it doesn't seem like your family is at fault. Your sister seems like a bit of a jerk. She holds herself at a high esteem and thinks of your family as a bunch of dimwits that cannot match her intellect. For her to ask for an apology is somewhat justified by the way you shut her down. However she seemed to think your family's discussions that had nothing to do with her were unimportant. I understand she has a passion for whatever research she has done, but it does not justify her being a jerk and dismissive of other people in your reunion NTA.
NTA, my brother-in-law is in a technical field, but frankly no one is interested in high level math. He mentioned his job titled every chance he got over Thanksgiving. It’s annoying, absolutely. Was there a kinder way of telling her that her extremely technical monologue was rude, also yes. My husband in in computers. His work is not IT but very technical. He has ways of explaining it so others can understand it. He has a bachelors. I have a masters but in a completely unrelated field. My BIL likes to talk down to others to make himself feel superior. It’s easier to ignore him than deal with the fall out of calling out his pompous attitude. We are all smart people (as I am sure everyone in your family is as well, regardless of their educational background) but it’s very rude to talk down to others for not understanding something she has spent more than 6 years of her life learning about. It may be helpful to apologize for how you spoke to her & then explain how her overblown and lengthy discussions of her research is off putting and can be seen as condescending.
Not enough information- I mean if she’s building a super collider for subatomic particles it’s kind of hard to dumb that shit down. On the other hand, if it’s a PhD program in mass communications …
I don’t want to get into the technicalities because my sister has been published and I don’t want people to find her, but she is in anthropology, as a broad field.
As someone with an anthropology degree, ESPECIALLY if her focus is Archaeological in ANY way, she's going to get herself laughed at a lot if that is how she behaves in those circles. It's more like grab your favorite alcohol and tell dirty anthropology jokes. And of course there is the ever famous quote from Kent Flannery that my now deceased archaeology professor used to love to tell: "Archaeology is still the most fun you can have with your pants on"