Don't Call me Doctor
Dear Academia: Don't call me Dr. Huffman. I don't want that title, and your applying it to me is beginning to offend me.
I can contribute to journals, and write posts of cartographic critique and philosophy, without having a Ph.D. It is entirely possible for the rest of us out here in the non-Ph.D. world to have something worthwhile to contribute to your discussions. Yes, I'm on the editorial boards of a couple of publications, and I help run a conference. I can do those things without fancy letters, too. You see me contributing in a way that you do, so you assume I am one of your club. But your club does not have the monopoly on intellectual contributions.
I am being hypersensitive to this right now, and that's unfair, so I'm venting here. But there's a grain of truth to all of this and it bothers me.
I'm still flattered by the time when some of my students would address me this way. But it reflects a worldview that bothers me.
I can contribute to journals, and write posts of cartographic critique and philosophy, without having a Ph.D. It is entirely possible for the rest of us out here in the non-Ph.D. world to have something worthwhile to contribute to your discussions. Yes, I'm on the editorial boards of a couple of publications, and I help run a conference. I can do those things without fancy letters, too. You see me contributing in a way that you do, so you assume I am one of your club. But your club does not have the monopoly on intellectual contributions.
I am being hypersensitive to this right now, and that's unfair, so I'm venting here. But there's a grain of truth to all of this and it bothers me.
I'm still flattered by the time when some of my students would address me this way. But it reflects a worldview that bothers me.