A REAL eye of a hurricane. From space.

PhD Week One: In the Eye of a Hurricane

Natalie M Garrett
Aug 31, 2018 · 3 min read

It is Friday. The last day of week one of my PhD program. After five days, I feel a sense of calm that seems unnatural. There’s a hurricane swirling around me and over the course of this week I’ve had a myriad of feelings from, “What did I DO?!” to “I already love being a student again.” to “How come everyone else seems so busy already?” There are readings to be done, grants to apply for, Python to learn, but… here I am writing a Medium article. It is my way of staying grounded, reflecting, and a reminder that I am no imposter. I belong here. (Shout out to my advisor, Casey Fiesler, for this timely advice from Tenured Professor Mr. Rogers on Imposter Syndrome.)

Today, while I was introducing myself in my Intro to Doctoral Studies course, I was reminded why I am here, which cut out all the whirling noise from that hurricane. Here’s how the introduction went in a nutshell:

Hi, I’m Natalie. I’ve had a relatively long career in higher education administration. Four years ago I took a leap to support the startup phase of a software company in Boulder.

While we all had the best intentions, we never talked about privacy or ethics outside of known requirements (i.e., FERPA and WCAG). We were a team of junior developers and scrappy business, academic, and/or coder-types who learned along the way. We were your typical agile shop: developers received user stories from the domain experts, they built features, tested them, fixed bugs, released, and did it all over again every two weeks.

We moved fast and broke things. We didn’t have time to reflect on ethics, privacy, or implications of our code; We were building a company on a short financial runway. We all assumed all was well. And, as far as we could tell it was.

While we didn’t run into any problems at that first company (I later worked with startups where ethics and integrity were an afterthought), it made me wonder, “When is the right time in a new business to start asking questions about ethics? Are there privacy and ethical principles that every new tech company should be following? Do tech companies (and ultimately founders) care about understanding the nuances, fairness, and implications of their code? Should coders have training in ethics? Is there a responsibility to tell users that their data is being used for anonymized market reports?”

Sharing my why helped me round out this chaotic week in peace with a reminder of my purpose. I’ve decided to take my own advice about how to stay relevant in exponential change. I’m “throw[ing] [my] hands up, open[ing] [my] eyes, and tak[ing] in as much of the experience as possible.”

What an indulgence to get paid (yup, my program is funded) to learn, ask questions, dig deeper, write, share, publish 🤞🏼, make different and deeper connections in academia, teach, discuss, advocate for change, and launch a new career path with all the wisdom I’ve learned along the way.

Next week, I’m going wind surfing IN that hurricane. Stay tuned….

Natalie M Garrett

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Technology is inevitable. If we are going to do it, let’s be intentional and focus on technology that positively impacts our society.

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