it's peer pressure

So. This ice bucket challenge thing going around.

Apparently another department on campus challenged my department to it.

It's not clear yet if it's faculty thing, or (I hope, please God, I hope) a "let's ask for student volunteers" thing.


Because I don't want to do the ice bucket challenge.

I'm sorry. I don't. I'd happily give money to the charity in question (but not the $100 that allegedly you are supposed to give as a non-participant; after this summer's expenses, that's a bit steep for me at the moment). But I don't want a bucket of ice water dumped over my head.

Three reasons:

1. I still occasionally get migraine headaches. Extreme cold on my sinuses can still trigger them. While I don't know for SURE it will cause a migraine (the only thing I know FOR SURE causes migraines, every time, is miso), still. And I have that tetchy neck muscle that spasms when it gets too cold, and then I hurt for the rest of the day.

2. It's....well, it's kind of humiliating. And if you're a woman, wearing a t-shirt or any kind of thin top, and you get cold stuff dumped on you - well, that can lead to photographs you DO NOT WANT getting out. And I'm a professor. I think I should be allowed to hold on to a few shreds of dignity and not having a wet cold t-shirt photo of me on the campus webpage is one of  those shreds.

3. It just feels really icky and coercive. "What kind of an awful person are you, do you hate people with ALS?" No, I don't, not in the least. "It's just a few minutes out of your day, and then you're done!" "You're a party pooper!" (Yes, okay, maybe I am.) I don't like anything where choosing not to participate leads others to think less of you. And I'm DONE with being coerced to do things: last weekend and the weekend before (and the blisters still haven't healed totally) are Exhibits A and B for this.


And it's hard for me to explain #3 to people, especially people more extroverted than I am. It takes a lot of energy for me to say "no" to something "everyone else" is doing, at least when it's something just kind of dumb. (I was good at saying no to the typical bad peer pressure stuff as a kid, though really, most of my friends were goody-goody introverts like me so I never got offered a doobie or pushed to shoplift). But the other thing is that there's always THAT person. You know the one - the one who hounds you on "WHY" you don't want to do something. And for someone like me, having to craft a good explanation beyond "I would rather not" is painful - sometimes to the point where I just sigh and go, "FINE. I'll do it then" and resent it the whole time.

This is partly a Guess Culture vs. Ask Culture thing again. A guess culture person would say, "Hey, I'm going to do this ice bucket challenge for ALS" and then wait to see if the other person said, "Oh, cool! I want to do it too!" An ask culture person asks other people to do it with them, without considering if it's something they want to do or not.

I don't know. I really don't want to do this, but if I'm the only holdout I probably WILL do it, despite the risk of discomfort, because it's harder to explain to people why I didn't do something like this than it is to just do it.

And I hate that. It's just another way I feel not-listened-to.

(I'm really hoping that my Best Frolleague Forever, who tends to be of a like mind with me on these things, is this time, and goes, "You know? I'm not doing this, sorry" and I can say "Yeah, me too.")