Challenges of landing the right advisor

One of the more difficult parts of the thesis process is the search for an advisor who not only holds an expertise in the domain of your thesis topic, but someone who also shares a set of values that coincide with your own, especially when your topic is of a very sensitive nature. Below is an excerpt from my journey of finding the right advisor for me personally and professionally.

While searching for an advisor, I wanted someone who had an understanding of what effects unconscious bias for men could have on women — not just emotionally, but also real world impacts that affect woman in ways we don’t normally think puts them at risk more than men.

So I was delighted when I read this excerpt from an interview with my potential advisor:

“…look at gender in product design: crash-test dummies are all sized to the “average male,” and as a result, car accidents are far more dangerous for women than men. Medical research subjects are nearly always men — despite the fact that women experience illnesses at different rates than men, and respond to treatment differently. Of course we’ve transferred these same biased practices to the web. In this context, it’s not surprising that, say, Apple’s Health app didn’t include a period tracker — one of the most normal bits of data in the world — for an entire year after launch.” [3]

After reading this, I was fairly certain that this was the right person to advise me. I researched a bit more, and came across an article she wrote about using curiosity to fuel content work. She writes:

“Curiosity is inherently unsafe, always forcing us out of known lands and into unexplored regions. What drives us forward is a desire to push past this discomfort: to get to know our unknowns, and to become comfortable within them.”

In a sense, this is what I am trying to accomplish with my thesis — to make men more curious about women — beyond mere physicality — to push them out of their “known land” and develop empathy for the things they don’t know about women.

You can read the full post here.