Valverde’s Fight with the Tower

Tony Tran

Section 2

Week 2

Valverde’s Fight with the Tower

This reading showed me a particular generalization that I believed was wrong: that university institutions are relatively laid-back and allow professors to teach and learn more about what they do best. To you professor Valverde, I am very thankful you told me of your story because I will value my education here more and put more effort into it. 
From my two years in UCD and your experience, I really think college is not just grades anymore. We need connections, sacrifices, and much effort to get to our aspiring career. We really need to see which friends are really friends that can help us either emotionally or just to get through classes. I believe we all need to make a sacrifice (whatever that may be) in order to reach our goal; however, I feel you paid too much of a price and that is not acceptable. Aside from personal issues, people of the institution should be focused not on the politics and whatnot, but more on  greater purpose: to give people a better education to create a better future. And this education must keep students as open-minded as possible because bias notions and beliefs must not create conflicts that may inflict problems to people of all ethnicities. 
And if the people on the top of the tower are showing this type of selective biased towards choosing or denying people for the wrong reasons, then this is the source of the problem. The top people are representative to what we (students) should be aiming to be and if a trait of them is being negatively biased, then they will pass these down to us and the cycle of biased leaders keeps going.

Q: Because we experienced only Prof Valverde's story of how she became a professor, I just have to wonder and know about other professor's stories so I may be more unbiased on the views about becoming a professor or a researcher. How hard is it for other professors to obtain their profession?