I presented a paper at the National World War II museum in grad school. My thesis and material, though well-researched, was very dry and I was the first presenter of the morning. 10 minutes before the presentation, the room was only half-full.

I'd prepared a simple powerpoint to provide visuals throughout, so literally 10 minutes before I was to go up, I bullet-listed my entire presentation on the back of my essay and began memorizing it. By the time I was introduced the room was full of sleepy-eyed academics completely uninterested in hearing about a tiny labor newspaper's take on Hitler's rise to power.

That is, until I went into presentation mode. I was told by my mentor before I left for the conference that I should simply read out an abbreviated version of my paper. Any clarity could be added in the Q&A portion. Instead, I paced the front of the room, making a lot of eye contact and using hand gestures to convey my points. If I lost my train of thought, I'd wax eloquent about whatever source I'd just discussed. I had a blast, and everyone paid close attention.

There were a few questions, one from another of my professors completely tearing into me for omitting an important secondary source, then the emcee got up to thank me for an "energetic delivery." He even said he was wide awake now, and I fatuously took that as a compliment. Overall, I was pleased, despite my professor's dig. Then I went back to school.

My mentor called me into his office. He'd heard about my presentation from the other professor. He told me that my presentation style was great for freshman survey courses and popular history lectures, but that I should tone down my delivery for academic audiences, who might feel patronized by anything more than a solemn report of my findings. It really ruptured my sense of purpose in the classroom, both in my seminars and as a TA.

In retrospect, I see that my mentor wanted me to treat presentations as more of a science than a History Channel special, but at the time I couldn't believe that he wanted his profession to be so boring. I quickly learned to tailor my style to my audience, but I left the profession during the recession for a job in business, where my presentation style is now considered "technical and wordy."

TL;DR - You can't please everyone

I've had mentors, colleagues, and anonymous reviewers suggest changes to my arguments, disagree with with things I've written, or suggest I consider alternate viewpoints. I've also been told by peers that I should shift the focus of my argument to sk ething they thought was more interesting than the point I was trying to make. I try to always listen, and have taken some suggestions and rejected others; this feedback is one of the most helpful parts of working in a scholarly community.

But I've never had anyone tell me I have to change my content to tell a different story (or at least, not since I was doing coursework, and then they were correcting me because I was inexperienced and making mistakes). I've never personally experienced any kind of institutional censorship, or felt pressured to make an argument or teach a narrative that I wasn't comfortable making. And while I've received a lot of money from outside agencies each of which, I'm sure, has its own agenda, I've never been told what kind of story I was supposed to tell by any of them.

I do try to avoid delicate topics with a few people, because I don't want to have a pointless fight about something I know we'll always disagree about, but this doesn't effect my teaching, conference papers, or anything I've submitted for publication.