Is it valid to feel uncomfortable with questions unrelated to the grading of your performance?

Question

I recently attended an online seminar related to building scientific writing and research skills. The TA started by saying he wanted us to introduce ourselves and asked each of us to tell everyone where they were born, currently live and what they do in their free time.

Is it valid for me to having felt uncomfortable with sharing personal information? I fail to see how this information was relevant for completing the seminar. From my point of view, it may introduce bias, if the TA dislikes some of the things he hears from an attendee.

Moreover, not everyone may have a socially acceptable answer to the question what they do in their free time. This leads to an uncomfortable situation where you either lie, not answer at all or say the way things are and face the consequences.

For clarity, one could, as an extreme example, imagine someone suffering from severe depression/crisis and university related work being the only thing they do. Or someone has unconventional interests. Being asked this question puts them in an uncomfortable postion.

I wanted to confront the TA with my concerns and not answer the questions, but I feared that it may have impacted the grading of my performance, so I didn't. I feel it's unethical to, even indirectly, "force" students answer questions that may put them in an uncomfortable position by using your position of power. Am I missing something or is it valid to feel this way? How could I go about dealing with similar situations in the future?

Answer 1

I am answering this on the basis of what it would be like in Canada. It may be very different in other cultures.

I fairly strongly disagree with many of the answers, and very strongly with many of the comments.

The situation here is supposed to be professional. It is supposed to be an instructional session in a professional activity. It is not a social occasion.

It is offensive to suggest that “you are going to face a long hard road in all avenues of your life” because you don’t want to spill out your life story at a seminar. This is essentially social blackmail, i.e.: Do what we are all doing or you are a pariah.

Turn it around. If you can’t handle being told that invasive questions are invasive, then your road is going to lead to some mighty dark places.

The personal questions that would be acceptable would be things like name, academic level, school or institution, and such. If the TA had asked something like “what do you hope to get from this seminar?”, that would be very different.

But “where were you born?” is not acceptable. I have worked with people for twenty years, gone to their weddings, and I don't know where they were born. And "what do you do in your free time?” is just plain invasive.

I agree with the OP that these questions were out of bounds.

Answer 2

and asked each of us to tell everyone where they were born, currently live and what they do in their free time.

These are routine questions that you should be(come) comfortable answering. No, it is not unethical to ask students to answer questions like this. Classes do not happen in a vacuum; even in a math class, it is fair to expect students to have basic skills in other areas, including basic social skills.

I fail to see how this information was relevant for completing the seminar. From my point of view, it may introduce bias, if the TA dislikes some of the things he hears from an attendee.

The TA was probably trying to create some rapport with the students. Having a go-to fact about each student might help the TA to remember names. And having the students speak aloud might help wake them up, especially in an early-morning class.

In a larger sense, I would try to worry less about the TA's opinion and bias -- the TA is just a student a few years older than you, what do you care what they think? It seems pretty unlikely to me that the TA would hate your answer so much that it would affect their grading. On the contrary, to the extent that the TA cares at all about your answer, it is probably that they are hoping for enthusiastic, genuine responses.

How could I go about dealing with similar situations in the future?

Have stock responses. For "what do you do in your free time," a good quick answer is "what free time?" But it's a good idea to think of something genuine you are comfortable sharing. For example, if you like dogs, a fair answer is: "I like to play with dogs." It doesn't matter at all if you don't actually spend much of your free time playing with dogs -- the point of the question is not to audit your timecard. Rather, the point is to state something that you enjoy doing, so that others can feel like they know something abut you.

Answer 3

These kinds of ice-breaker exercises are common in academic activities and also in the professional workforce. They typically involve sharing basic details about your background and interests so that others can get to know you. (In this respect, they are not atypical of the types of questions people face in ordinary social situations.) It is a good idea to become comfortable with these exercises as a basic form of sociability. If you have hobbies, interests or life-circumstances that you don't feel comfortable sharing, learn to give some stock answers that get you through these questions without disclosing details you're uncomfortable with.

I would recommend that you take a more open-minded view of this activity and consider that it is probably designed to help people get to know each other, in order to facilitate greater collegiality or enjoyment during the seminar session. The vast majority of people take the answers to these questions in good spirit, so unless your hobby is cutting the ears off puppies, you are probably going to be fine. It is fine to feel uncomfortable in these situations (some introverted people do). However, while it is not impossible that disagreements over background, personal activities, etc., could lead to bias, focusing on this highly unlikely outcome at the expense of the more general positive effect strikes me as a kind of paranoia.

(It is also worth pointing out that your position here has all the hallmarks of the deleterious effects of "call-out culture". You seem to be taking a relatively innocuous social situation, confecting a very marginal possible negative outcome based on presumed discriminatory intent, elevating that hypothetical negative to be the sole focus of attention, and then expressing a desire to "confront" the "unethical" action of the identified malfeasor. In such a circumstance, I would suggest some introspection on that aspect of the matter and some reconsideration of whether that is a good long-term strategy for dealing with people.)

Answer 4

Usually people don't insist on getting every question answered. If you feel uncomfortable answering your origins, just skip the topic and tell more about your hobbies or your pet. If you don't want to share your hobbies, watching TV or listening to music is always an option.

People want to get to know with whom they are working. They are not interested in your personal secrets or inner struggles. Don't get intimidated by such questions, they are not posed in bad faith.

Answer 5

Is it valid to feel uncomfortable with questions unrelated to the grading of your performance?

Yes, definitely. Note that "Are there legitimate reasons to ask this question?" and "Is it legitimate to feel uncomfortable with being asked this question?" are completely different questions. You are completely entitled to your feelings, even if they include discomfort at legitimate questions.

I fail to see how this information was relevant for completing the seminar.

People tend to find personal interactions aid collaboration. Even if the content of the personal interaction is not relevant, the mere fact of there being personal interaction is therefore relevant.

From my point of view, it may introduce bias, if the TA dislikes some of the things he hears from an attendee.

Yes. And the degree to which personal interactions help varies from person to person, and from moment to moment even for the same person. While an extrovert may find the questions fun, a shy and/or neuroatypical person may find the questions to be a completely unnecessary and sadistic spoon expense. The question of how to balance this issue with the general usefulness of personal interaction is not a simple one. Creating an environment where people don't feel put on the spot should be a consideration, such as making it opt-in, or giving participants various options. In the case of "where they were born, currently live and what they do in their free time", the TA could have phrased it as "Tell me about yourself, such as where you were born, currently live, or do in your free time". That phrasing would make it seem more like suggestions of what to talk about, rather than a checklist that they have to get through.

I wanted to confront the TA with my concerns and not answer the questions, but I feared that it may have impacted the grading of my performance, so I didn't.

There should be a means of providing anonymous feedback; if there isn't, that's even more of a concern than the personal questions themselves. It's perfectly valid to share your concerns and ask the TA to take them into consideration.

I feel it's unethical to, even indirectly, "force" students answer questions that may put them in an uncomfortable position by using your position of power.

It's not exactly forcing them, it's just making them uncomfortable if they don't want to, and the catch-22 about consent is that it's difficult to ask for consent without making someone who doesn't want to give it uncomfortable.

How could I go about dealing with similar situations in the future?

Look for when you might be dealing with an X Y problem. When someone asks you for Y and you're uncomfortable giving Y, consider whether there's some X that is really what they want. Your TA says "I want you to tell me what you do in your spare time" and you hear "I need to say what I do in my spare time". But the TA's ultimate goal isn't to collect dossiers on what the students do in their space time (probably), it's to have personal interactions. Asking what people do is a means, not an end. What they're really saying when they say "I want you to tell me what you do in your spare time" is "I want to have a personal interaction with you". So have a personal interaction with them. Tell them what your favorite subject is. Tell them your pronouns. Tell them about your pets. If you spend several minutes talking about yourself, is the TA going to pipe up at the end and say "Hey, you never told me what you do in your spare time"? Possibly. But quite likely not. If they do, they're showing they're prioritizing sticking to a formula over teaching the actual people they have as students.

Answer 6

For a shy person or someone from a minority or someone ... yes, these can be disconcerting at first. Eventually, if you work at it (the shy person especially) you can get over it.

But no, you don't need to tell the truth and certainly not all the truth. Nor do you need to be very specific. What do you do? Well, I read a lot. What do you read? Popular fiction and tech stuff. Where are you from? The Middle East (Africa ...). Where do you live now? Ohio (Finland...).

The general answers reveal little and the asker will move on, though it is good to have at least one follow up.

Now that you know this happens, you can construct some non-committal answers.

There is no reason to take offense, though. I ask everyone where they are from, but because I like connections. Generally, connections are good, even for introverts. But they develop over time, not as a result of simple questions like these.

Also, it is important that you reach a point where you feel comfortable interacting with them. Asking questions, especially.

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Some questions are off limits, however. Questions about medical issues or about performance in other courses.

Answer 7

First of all, you don't need to ask anyone permission for what you feel. If these questions make you uncomfortable, they make you uncomfortable, and that's valid because it's true.

A few people have given you suggestions as to how to handle this situation: it's a social opening, not an interrogation, so you're allowed to deflect, skip, (gently) lie and otherwise disengage. Learning how to use these techniques will be helpful in general. "Grow a thicker skin" is obviously neither helpful or constructive, but such a strong reaction as you're having can be a symptom of deeper issues, and if you think this is the case, I encourage you to seek some support.

But also, your discomfort is not that unusual. I have done a little bit of training in "audience management" as part of a job in healthcare - a field with perhaps more attention to sensitivity and empathy than academia. Like your TAs, we were encouraged to use "icebreakers", but we were advised to ask "small" questions: not "what are your passions" or "where are you from" (this in particular was highlighted as a rather uncomfortable question for many people), but stuff like "what is your favourite biscuit" or "share a cool fact that you've learnt recently". The aim is to give people a "hook" to introduce themselves, but at low stakes - nobody cares if you say ginger biscuit when in reality you like custard creams better, and you'll probably find it easier to share these tidbits than a significant aspect of your personality, like your hobbies or your origin.

Answer 8

It's an invitation to participate in an elementary social interaction. You can either accept that invitation or effectively refuse it by providing a minimalistic response along the lines of "I like reading books and watching movies" or "I like the outdoors" or "I don't really have much free time these days". Realistically, no-one is going to pry for more detail.

Yes, some people find it difficult to imagine that others might not enjoy such interactions. Conversely, some people might find it difficult to imagine that others do benefit from or expect such interaction.

I suggest that what's going on here is that you are (i) misunderstanding a request for engaging an elementary social interaction as an attempt to pry into your privacy, and (ii) vastly overestimating "the consequences" of "saying the way things are". In other words, you are overthinking it. Just provide a polite non-answer and move on.

As an aside which might not apply to your situation, people are sometimes uncomfortable with such questions not because they fear "the consequences" of "saying the way things are" (really, what do you imagine these consequences to be in an online seminar on research skills?), but because they are in some way or another ashamed of "the way things are". For example, they feel that they should have an interesting hobby and that it reflects badly on them if they don't, or that they should lead an active social life and that it reflects badly on them if they don't. I would venture to guess that this is far more common than an actual fear of "consequences". In that case, the best thing to do would be to confront such feelings of shame rather than trying to blame the situation which instigated them.

Anything may make someone uncomfortable. Someone could be self-conscious about their voice and might prefer to stay silent. Someone might not want to share their name. Someone might detest being asked where they are from. Someone might despise being asked anything at all about their childhood. There is no obligation on people to avoid doing things that may make someone uncomfortable. If you have an unusual thing that makes you uncomfortable (such as stating what you do in free time), it's on you to be able to handle such elementary interactions, not on someone else to foresee this. Just because someone might have, say, social phobia does not mean it's some sort of illegitimate power play to expect them to engage in elementary social interaction.

All that said, I do sometimes find it obnoxious when people do this and I find it's better practice to ask a more open-ended question and explicitly indicate that there is no obligation to answer. That is, tell us something about yourself if you like rather than where were you born, where do you live, and what do you do in your free time.

Answer 9

It's just meaningless small talk so you are allowed to interpret things as broadly as possible and ignore some questions as long as you give some answer, any answer to most of them. For example: What do you do in your spare time could be answered with something you like, even if you don't have time to do it, even if it's not an activity. For example, "I like cats/dogs/cars/animals/food". You could even just ignore some questions and just say something else about yourself instead. No one is going to call you on it because no one actually cares. It's not an interview.

Answer 10

I think most of these answers are failing to make an important distinction.

The question "What do you do in your free time" (or variations of "Tell me about yourself" or "What's a fun fact about you") etc. can be answered with graceful evasion. Nobody really cares, it's just a chance to make a connection with people with similar interests. If OP is concerned, it would be wise to have a harmless stock answer prepared. (Though there's always the risk of exposure as a result of enthusiastic follow-up questions, however well-intentioned.)

On the other hand, the question "where are you from" or "where were you born" can be colossally loaded--so much so that it isn't even legal to ask it in US job interviews. Members of groups who are frequently discriminated against get asked variations of this all the time--and even if the TA doesn't mean it this way, that can potentially remind them of every time they said "Cleveland" and then had the follow-up "No, but where are you really from?" Apart from that--I'm writing this in October 2022; can the other answerers really tell me that saying "I was born in Russia" is guaranteed not to lead the TA and fellow classmates to draw prejudicial conclusions? I think not.

Whatever the TA's intent, asking questions that can potentially cause disproportionate discomfort to members of minority groups is neither appropriate nor an effective means of building camaraderie.

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As I said above, I think the "say your hobbies" question is more neutral and manageable, and thus more permissible. But I think other answers have underestimated the risks posed to those who give unconventional responses. I can point to two actual situations where people were asked these questions in job interviews and were passed over, in part as a result of the response.

In one case, the interviewee answered a "what are your hobbies" question by saying they were interested in locomotive engineering. The interviewer asked a follow-on question: "Oh, what interests you about that?" The interviewee didn't know what to say and responded "It's just a personal interest." Interviewer pressed further but interviewee couldn't come up with anything else and just repeated "Oh it's a personal interest"--shy, neuroatypical, polite fiction, who knows why? But the interviewer talked about how they "obviously wouldn't be able to work with that weirdo" and shared it as a "funny story" for a long time afterward.

In another instance, the interviewer noted that the interviewee had a two-hour-long commute, and asked what he did to pass the time. He said he liked to "just sit and think about things," which the interviewers thought made the candidate seem sufficiently unrelatable that it was a factor in making them choose someone else.

Obviously that's an interview situation and not a seminar icebreaker, but I think other answers to the question have been a bit too dismissive, even of OP's concern over admitting to an unusual hobby. It's probably a better practice to favor more open-ended questions (or ones more specifically focused on trivia) and to give participants advance notice that they'll be asked to share something, in case they need to make something up.

Answer 11

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the TA should not have asked these questions. It's too personal, not to mention risky, if answered. Tiercelet's answer explains why the first two are not harmless. This one explains why the third question is also a dangerous one to ask.

People do things in their free time that not everyone else approve of. This does not mean "illegal". There are plenty of legal things that others can find uncomfortable. Examples:

• Maybe the student is politically active for a cause they passionately believe in, but the majority are against it. For example, maybe they think everyone should stop eating meat because it's animal cruelty.
• Maybe the student believes in some evangelical religion and spends their free time spreading it.
• Maybe the student writes erotica for leisure, perhaps publish the work under some pen name. Maybe the student even works as an escort/stripper. Imagine the consequences if the student actually says this, with the implicit offer of their services to the class. One could easily get complaints to the university.

Some answers above suggest the student might be able to give some stock response instead. The problem with this is that it's lying. Even if one is willing to bend personal moral codes to avoid a scene in class, all religions are likely to prohibit lying. Once religion gets involved then all bets are off.

The TA should not have asked these questions. Given that they already did, then perhaps the best the student can do is to say they won't answer in public but can tell the TA in private after class if they really want to know. This should warn the TA that they are treading on thin ice. If the TA is perceptive, they might swap to less controversial questions as a result.

I once witnessed a similar conversation where someone asked what they must have thought was a perfectly innocent question. The second person said "are you sure you want to know?". The first person said yes, then after getting the answer, they realize that they didn't actually want to know. C'est la vie. You live and learn.