Rewatching The Office is really shedding light on the extreme Michael Scott tendencies of one of our tenured professors. Like that precise combination of gross incompetence + taking on tasks and duties that he is unable to complete and KNOWS that he is unable to complete but he still wants the associated prestige and short term gratification of feeling important + emotionally sensitive and conflict-averse and cannot take criticism even a little bit. Like he is a pretty nice and well-intentioned person in everyday interaction but absolutely unbearable to work with
For example: before the summer I had an argument with this man about AI, because he had told a student he was supervising that it was fine to use it in their MA thesis so long as it wasnāt for actual text analysis. Like he told them they could use it for passages where they go over previous research and their theoretical framework. AS IF POSITIONING YOURSELF TO THAT PREVIOUS RESEARCH AND CRITICALLY ENGAGING THE THEORIES AND EXPLAINING HOW THEY ARE APPLICABLE IN THIS EXACT STUDY IS NOT A CRUCIAL PART OF A THESIS AND SOMETHING STUDENTS ARE MEANT TO LEARN AT THIS STAGE OF THEIR EDUCATION.
Anyway I very politely (maybe not that politely) questioned his reasoning and when all else failed pointed out that our official uni guidelines forbid the use of AI to produce any text at all, and students may only refer to it as one would a search engine. He only said oh well that is a matter of interpretation (?!?!). So then I had to tell him point blank that if I am the person assigned to examine your studentās work I will fail them, so at least inform your student that this is a risk and they should maybe rewrite those passages to avoid that risk. And he almost burst out crying
Is this not the essence of Michael Scott? Extremely firm in his unfounded opinions and then heartbroken when you criticize them
