Stop being a Victim!

Most of my friends and family know by now about my viva experience. It was hard to accept the fact that I am a victim of bullying and discrimination. I have been in the UK for 25 years and have been teaching for 20 plus years of which 17 have been as a senior lecturer in health and social care. This vast experience of inter-professional education from access to masters level was suddenly for nothing. My examiners took away all my confidence and self-esteem with a few chosen sentences. They breached every principle of teaching and assessment by not providing even one positive comment during the viva.

Whats is bullying? Normally I do not like to use Wikipedia for information but in this case it is easier and identified the central issues. I have not been spoken to like this is many many years. I felt suddenly not the responsible and in control adult but a worthless waste of space as I did not meet the expectations of the examiners. This verbal destruction of a person is as bad if not worse that physical bullying as it raises stress level, makes people physically ill and leaves the depressed and on occasion feeling suicidal. I forgot that I was a victim and that it was not my fault or responsibility how my tormentors behaved. I took on all the accusation to the true.

Why did this happen? I am a fairly assertive person but prefer to avoid conflict and give people chance to change their approach. I think this makes people think I do not say anything because I cannot say anything. The keeping quiet in the first place is seen as a sign of weakness and to be exploited. Normally, if the behavior of the other person does not change I do make a point of being assertive and discuss the issue with the individual. I learned a long time ago (when I was studying in the army)that angry outburst does not serve any useful purpose. That's why I give people 3 chances to make a change by hinting at the issue and also by role modeling the acceptable behavior. This motto has served me well in the last 2 decades. I had got used to being taken seriously in personal as well as professional life, in both nursing and education professions. That is why this experience was an unexpected shock and I was not prepared to be assertive on the spot.

It took me a whole week to calm down and stop crying. It was another week before I could articulate my feelings of pain, shame, worthlessness and eventually anger. It was the loving support of my husband, family and friends that made me see that I was a victim of bullying. All the comments made by the examiners were not true. I have been successfully carrying out my professional duties and responsibilities for many years. I have students who after nearly 2 decades tell me how they have valued my input in their careers. All of them cannot be wrong and just 2 people who have not idea about who I am cannot be right.

Assessment is a process of learning. I have assessed students both on paper and in vivas and have had to fail them on occasion. But I have never destroyed a student. They always felt supported with clear constructive feedback and went away knowing what issues needed to be improved and why. My viva has left me confused and disheartened as a month later and I still do not know what was wrong! On reflection I feel that they did not believe any work in the thesis was my own. They were questioning me on basic information like who is the key person in relation to the concept of community of learners! If the whole work was through a collaborative approach how far does one specify exactly what you did and exactly what each person of the research team did! Viva is supposed to be for defending your research findings but I do not feel I was allowed to defend anything. I was not allowed to complete my answers or show where the issues in question were within the thesis. From the verbal onslaught I gathered that while methodology, the process and presentation of the work was not wrong they just did not believe it was my words, since large parts were within the project reports. Well they would be as I wrote the reports! But this brought a response that I was copying from myself and should be using quotations... wonder if the quotation can cover most of the chapter? And also to be told that my English was not good just floored me totally. I do not think I was able to form a coherent sentence by this time.

Did my supervisor sense that something was wrong? I am not sure since he did not delve into my comments about what happened but went into defensive that the responsibility of the 'poor' work was all mine! Sadly he did not see that the comments made were not just insulting and bullying towards me but also towards the quality of supervision he had provided. Eventually I wrote a mail to the VC and deputy VC and Head of School complaining about this soul destroying viva experience. But of course the investigation cannot be carried out until there is a formal complaint or appeal against the result. I asked for advice from the student's union. While they made all the right supportive noises, this is between term time and so mails goign back and forth slowly. Why they cannot use the phone is beyond me. But I shall persevere as I want to make sure no one else has to suffer this kind of an ordeal.

Stop being a victim! I tell myself this when ever the memories come flooding in and nearly overwhelm me again. I am worth something and have value int this world. How can people have such massive egos where they feel they are the last word in the universe. In the grand scheme of things they also r on the same par with everyone else. What they do is not any more important that what I or others do. I remind myself that when in the one room if one of them passed out I would have been the most important person as I would be able to give first aid! How does doing some work in e-learning make you so important? I was doing the research for pleasure of learnign and giving back to my colleagues something that would help them as a lot of what i know had come from trial and error. Hopefully my work will shorten their learning curve. I do not want to use this qualification for moving up some career ladder as I am happy facilitating learning.

Now I am having to rebuild my confidence and self-esteem. I have to remind myself of the skills I have and the feedback I have from colleagues and students of the years in the form of appreciative comments. Am I going to complete the rewriting of the thesis? I hope so but the pleasure of learning has been sadly destroyed by the 'teachers' who carried out the viva. I am trying to also recover from the stress induced relapse of my illness. The pain levels have to be controlled with more medication. Maybe I will start by completing the drafts of papers for publications that I was doing. Concentrate on other things in life like sorting out my home and clearing the junk. It also is I feel a time for change. I also am not sure I want to be thought of as a peer with the people who behaved in such a bad manner. So I will wait a bit longer and slowly get back into the studying. I will and can make a difference. I will hold my head up and fight for my right as a human being not to be bullied.