Gotta love the day after the final grades have been posted. The grade-grubbing emails are nothing short of awesome. Here's one recent gem:
Professor GMP:
I just checked my final grade for YYY 123 [course number] and it's an AB. I just want to know if this is a right grade for me. I did a hard work for this class during the semester, I did all homework assignments, and the three exams were not bad. I'm sorry to bother you with this, it's just, I'm a freshman here and I'm planning to transfer to another college so GPA matters a lot to me. So, I just want to make sure everything's correct. Have a nice Summer!
Thanks,
Stu
Why thank you, Stu, for your concern. Yes, everything is correct. I love your assumption that the three exams are not bad without having actually inquired about how you did on the final. And I love it how the fact that you *need* a high GPA to transfer to presumably an awesome school should be brought to my attention as a reason to give you an A, because clearly this particular need trumps every other possible type of need to get an A. By the way, you ended up being in the middle of the AB range.
Sometimes (all the time, really) when I grade I fall into the deep depths of despair.
My exams are "fair" and "not too hard" -- so say the comments on my RateMyProf profile. Yet, when I see that a whole bunch of people don't do even 50% with the help of all the materials -- lecture notes, exam prep questions, review sessions in which I go over the exam prep questions -- I ask myself "WTF"?
Where I went to undergrad, to get the top grade (equivalent of an A in the US) you had to get 90% or more, no ands, ifs, or buts. Tough exam? Tough luck. You needed 50% to merely pass. This semester, I gave essentially the same exams as the year before. Only 2 people had a total score over 90% this semester; last semester I had more than 10 people in this range. So naturally I had to curve the hell out of the grades.
One thing I often wonder though is how fair all this curving and chewing material into bite-size pieces is to really talented students. They probably never get their asses kicked by really challenging material until they go to grad school; unfortunately, for many it may be too late as they won't ever go to grad school. I have seen several students like that who sail through coursework essentially bored and never develop a real passion for anything, because everything comes so easy to them. One such kid was totally jaded and kept saying how everything bored him; you should have seen his statement of purpose for application to grad school -- it was a mixture of "everything bores me because I am so awesome", "I am awesome and some subfields are totally boring and I would never bother working in them", and "I have no idea what I really want to do because everything is so effing boring." I had him come to do a research project with me over the summer and then I showed him some serious butt kicking by a research problem. He was completely flabbergasted, and after the initial shock dove into the problem with great zeal. It was also news to him that I expected him to calculate everything all the way, not just sketch a solution and know how to do it "in principle" (don't get me started on the evils of partial credit in STEM courses.; that's a whole ranty post right there). Last year the student graduated with a BS and went to a top private school; he chose an advisor in a specialty similar to mine, with words that this subfield is the only one that he has ever found challenging enough. I am glad he'll stay in my subfield, but there are plenty of other challenging subfields: it's just that no one in any other subfield has ever had a chance -- since chances are largely limited to coursework -- to really challenge him to the point of discomfort that helps people grow.
I think it's important that someone show you where your limits may be and force you to push them. The earlier that happens, the better -- you will have more time to get over your huge ego and actually realize there is a whole world of interesting problems and unbelievably smart people working on them out there. That's why I think challenging coursework is important at the undergraduate level -- if we rely on summer research projects or going to grad school to provide for the first time adequate challenge to smart students, that's too late. We will have lost many of them to sheer boredom. Unfortunately, unless the classes are very small, it's hard to tailor the coursework to student abilities -- especially at R1 institutions, this type of approach would simply require the time no research-active instructor would want to invest.
For the record, I think that graduate school education in the US is the best in the world. However, undergraduate education leaves much to be desired. I understand that this comes primarily because undergraduate education serves a different purpose in the US than many other places -- a rite of passage for the middle class, a chance to explore and become independent, as well as a chance to broaden if not deepen one's education. The latter, I feel, is honestly only needed because the public K-12 education (as I see now with my kids) is painfully nonuniform across the country (even within a single state!) and also leaves a great deal to be desired. But my feelings about K-12 in the US are also a topic for a whole different ranty post...
For comparison, however, let me just tell you what the system was where I did my undergrad (it was in a small country in Europe and before the Bologna convention). I think I received a very good and very broad education, but all the breadth was thanks to my butt having being kicked in grades 5-12. For example, in high school, I had courses in world literature, two mandatory foreign languages, plenty of math, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, history, social sciences, music, art, and gym. I even had one year of Latin in high school. (I still have nightmares involving my high-school history and biology oral exams.)
College was free, which is another major difference with respect to the US. Once I started college, majoring in physics, the education was extremely technically focused. Apart from the courses in physics, the only other courses were math (4 semesters), chemistry (2 semesters), and English (2 semesters). There was no homework and no midterms, just the final. You had to go to discussions and work on problems on your own, if you didn't it's your funeral. You could take the final in one of the exam periods (June, September, or January). If there were N courses in a given academic year, you needed to pass no less than N-2 by the start of the next academic year (October) to be able to advance into the next year. If you didn't, you would fail the year and would not be allowed to take any of the next year's exams. (You could still take the remaining exams from the year you flunked.)
A number of courses were 2-semester long (fall+spring), so you could first take the final after the two semesters were over (some major were much worse -- my friend with a degree in literature had 4-semester courses and a 6-semester course in aesthetics -- yes, you go to lectures for 3 years and only then get to take the exam; it often took people several years to prep for it and pass it). If you wanted to "clear the year" (pass all the exams before the new academic year starts) taking exams required a bit of strategizing: you take the exams for single-semester fall courses in January, the exams for single-semester spring courses exams in June, and then spend most of the summer preparing to take the finals for the two-semester courses in September. Each final consisted of a written and an oral part: if you pass the 4-hour written exam (passing means scoring 50% or higher) you get to go to the oral. The orals could be very long: you draw typically 3 questions, write a long and detailed answer (derivations, proofs, etc) for each, and that's the beginning of a discussion between you and the professor, typically with you in front of the board. Your own oral easily lasts an hour or more, and that doesn't include waiting for your turn which can take all day. (Addition: If you failed an exam, you could take it again in the upcoming exam periods, but after failing 3 times I think you had to start paying to take that exam again. And if in the meantime the instructor changes, that's your problem.)
First and second year math courses were among the early gate-keeping courses: a number of students kept taking math exams repeatedly but unsuccessfully; these students eventually never finished their studies. Getting a degree was never a guarantee, getting it in 4 years was very rare (show-off alert: yours truly did). I remember my first-year math exam; it was a two-semester course containing linear algebra, single variable calculus, vector calculus, ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and systems of ODEs (also Fourier and Laplace transforms). I had studied for it all summer and had passed the written part in early September with flying colors. The oral part was in a room on the top floor; it was still very hot outside and everyone was roasting. I drew my three questions and wrote the necessary proofs, and spent the vast portion of the day sitting, waiting for my turn, and listening to other people's orals. The prof looked over my proofs and asked me questions about details, and then whipped out his list of questions -- more like a booklet with some 200 questions, and started quizzing me on them, flipping through the booklet . The whole thing lasted for an hour. One classmate of mine looked really queasy and almost passed out near the end of his hour-long roast (he's a very smart guy but never had much stamina and I think it eventually limited his career reach).
When I mentioned this to my postdoc, he got all defensive and said how at his BS school (a very good US school btw) there were all these mystery kids who never showed up for any classes but had all A's. My comment was that it's because the criteria for an A were not made for them -- and that it would have been better for them if the criteria were higher and they actually had to strain a few dendrites along the way. Perhaps there are only a handful of schools that can afford to uphold superhigh undergraduate standards in the US, but most places don't -- I know my present place of employment doesn't -- because we are all about enticing people to enroll, enticing people to pick our major, and making sure they get out in the time allotted. If we don't, our department becomes unpopular, and it all translates into low enrollments and we all know what low enrollments mean -- reduced funding or even nixing of programs and departments.
I do my best to tailor the material, whatever I teach, to the class that is in front of me. Often, that means some or a lot of remedial work so we'd get to a point where we can intelligently start discussing the material. I never think students are stupid but I often wish they had more structure and more strict criteria in their education leading to college. Once in college, I wish we as instructors were in a position to establish firm non-negotiable criteria for what must be learned at all cost, and I wish we had the ability to fail students who do not meet them instead of just letting them pass on with marginal grades. There is a strong disincentive to be a hardliner teacher -- apparently, you can only get away with it at certain schools. Where I am, it would be teaching and career suicide. If all your other colleagues who teach the same course just dumb the material down and grade on a curve, you do it too.
I teach at the level at which the students need me to, but boy do I wish we had the freedom to make the courses more challenging and the students a little (or a lot!) more uncomfortable, without negative consequences to our own careers or the financial standing of our departments... Because I think many students would surprise themselves with how much they can really do if pushed really hard.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Odd or Not?
My oldest son, about to start middle school, has a very good friend with whom he's inseparable. The friend is a very smart and well-behaved boy, and we love having him around, which is pretty much all the time (the two have sleepovers almost every weekend and shorter playdates even on weekdays).
The friend's parents have been divorced for a number of years and the mom is getting remarried. We've known about the wedding for a few months and I usually ask her how the preparations are going, because it's a good topic for small talk at pick-up/drop-off, and she seems really excited and always eager to chat about it.
The wedding is this weekend and there will be about 150 people (that strikes me as fairly large, but maybe not according to American standards). We were not invited to the wedding. Today, as we were doing kid pick up/drop off, the bride-to-be told my husband that they (the bride, groom, and the bride's kids) would come over to our place before the wedding, at 11-ish am on Saturday, all dressed up and in the limo, to say 'hi' and have some pictures taken with us.
That struck me as really odd and, in all honesty, ticked me off a bit. Why exactly are they coming over to our place to take pictures? If they wanted to share the wedding day with us, they should have invited us to the wedding, it's not like it's a small intimate affair. This way, they are honestly just disturbing our Saturday routine (which pretty much involves the kids lazily lying about watching TV, me talking on the phone while trying to wake up with coffee before preparing brunch, and my husband sleeping late after playing World of Warcraft till wee hours the night before). Are we now supposed to get all dressed up or what?
I suppose they want to show off their fancy limo, dress, and tuxedos, but still -- I think the whole thing is a bit rude, assuming we'd be available and interested in the showing off. We are not part of the event and they can show us pictures after the fact.
Am I the only one whom this strikes as weird or inconsiderate? Or maybe it is acceptable as a cultural peculiarity that I am not familiar with? Whaddaya think, Intertube friends: odd or not?
The friend's parents have been divorced for a number of years and the mom is getting remarried. We've known about the wedding for a few months and I usually ask her how the preparations are going, because it's a good topic for small talk at pick-up/drop-off, and she seems really excited and always eager to chat about it.
The wedding is this weekend and there will be about 150 people (that strikes me as fairly large, but maybe not according to American standards). We were not invited to the wedding. Today, as we were doing kid pick up/drop off, the bride-to-be told my husband that they (the bride, groom, and the bride's kids) would come over to our place before the wedding, at 11-ish am on Saturday, all dressed up and in the limo, to say 'hi' and have some pictures taken with us.
That struck me as really odd and, in all honesty, ticked me off a bit. Why exactly are they coming over to our place to take pictures? If they wanted to share the wedding day with us, they should have invited us to the wedding, it's not like it's a small intimate affair. This way, they are honestly just disturbing our Saturday routine (which pretty much involves the kids lazily lying about watching TV, me talking on the phone while trying to wake up with coffee before preparing brunch, and my husband sleeping late after playing World of Warcraft till wee hours the night before). Are we now supposed to get all dressed up or what?
I suppose they want to show off their fancy limo, dress, and tuxedos, but still -- I think the whole thing is a bit rude, assuming we'd be available and interested in the showing off. We are not part of the event and they can show us pictures after the fact.
Am I the only one whom this strikes as weird or inconsiderate? Or maybe it is acceptable as a cultural peculiarity that I am not familiar with? Whaddaya think, Intertube friends: odd or not?
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Happy Bloggiversary!
Today is Academic Jungle's 1st anniversary. It opened with Delayed Gratification at the old URL (geekmommyprof.blogpost.com); today's post is my 86th. I moved to http://academic-jungle.blogspot.com/ on August 7 with Jungle Juggle.
I am proud to have acquired 45 followers and 282 readers who follow the blog on Google Reader. Google Analytics gives me the following numbers (these are only from August 12, 2010 till today, i.e. just since I moved to the new URL)
Total pageviews: 106,265
Unique pageviews: 86,966
I think these are all very cool numbers for a 1-year-old small independent blog.
Another cool piece of statistics is the map of visitors -- they came from 107 countries!
What have I learned about blogging in the past year? Like many other human activities, blogging can be aggravating or boring; on the other hand, it can be fun, therapeutic, or enlightening. The positives overall outweigh the negatives, which is why I am still around.
Negative aspects first: I have had several kerfuffles in my first year, most of which I don't particularly care to remember. The first one transpired before I completed a full month of blogging, it was completely surprising and largely disillusioning. It mainly had a censoring effect on my subsequent writing. I freely admit that I now avoid writing about certain topics altogether and significantly tone down my writing on many others because I don't have the time or the energy to fight off the potential onslaught of vitriolic comments. Hats off to those who have no such issues, as it looks like there are plenty of bloggers who thrive on these little explosions; honestly, I find them (the kerfuffles) nothing but draining. I don't find them amusing even when they happen to other people. But, I also found that censoring your writing is apparently no guarantee that someone somewhere won't get ticked off by whatever you write: no matter how personal or benign a post, there is always the potential to aggravate people. Oh well. I suppose that's just blogging imitating life.
But, all this negativity is hardly appropriate for a birthday, so off to positive things. What are my favorite aspects of blogging? Bloggy friends and acquaintances, bar none. There are a number of bloggers whose writing I really enjoy for various reasons -- some are serious, some goofy, some focused on the science/academia, some more on the personal aspects, but all are invariably whip-smart and insightful. With some I have connected off-blog. I really cherish the connections to these interesting people whom I would have never met otherwise.
I also appreciate blogging as a means of venting (I am sure Mr GMP also appreciates that I don't offload all -- only most -- of my many frustrations on him!) I enjoy other people's ranty posts and do feel better after writing mine. Moreover, I really enjoy blogging as a creative outlet of sorts. I know blogging does not constitute creative writing, or at least not very high-quality creative writing the way I do it, but the posts I enjoyed writing the most essentially read like essays.
Overall, it's been an interesting year, and in hindsight it does seem kind of long really. I started blogging at the end of my 6th year as a faculty (several months after I learned that I had been approved for tenure) and now is the end of my 7th. I am off to a sabbatical leave, which I am really looking forward to. In the past year, I have graduated four students, two with an MS and two with a PhD, received a couple of teaching awards, written many, many grants, and many, many papers. At the end of June I am expecting a baby on whose name Mr GMP and I have yet to agree. One option for the name would have our three boys' first initials be NMR, which greatly pleases the geek in me. Another option results in NML, the inverse alphabetical order of these letters, also high on the geek-o-meter. A third would yield NMA (enema -- LOL). Perhaps we'll just name him Spawn 3.
Dear reader, I have two orders of business where I need your input. One is a very important issue that has been bugging me for quite some time: what is, in your opinion, the proper name for a blogging anniversary? (You can enter multiple answers.)
My other request is a bit more serious: if you are a regular reader, and especially if you haven't commented much or at all, tell us a little bit about who you are, what you like/dislike about Academic Jungle, and what I can do to encourage you to comment more. Do you read for the academic (research/teaching/funding) content, for the more personal (family/mommy/immigrant) content, or is mixing it all up exactly your cup of tea?
Thanks everyone for reading!
I am proud to have acquired 45 followers and 282 readers who follow the blog on Google Reader. Google Analytics gives me the following numbers (these are only from August 12, 2010 till today, i.e. just since I moved to the new URL)
Total pageviews: 106,265
Unique pageviews: 86,966
I think these are all very cool numbers for a 1-year-old small independent blog.
Another cool piece of statistics is the map of visitors -- they came from 107 countries!
What have I learned about blogging in the past year? Like many other human activities, blogging can be aggravating or boring; on the other hand, it can be fun, therapeutic, or enlightening. The positives overall outweigh the negatives, which is why I am still around.
Negative aspects first: I have had several kerfuffles in my first year, most of which I don't particularly care to remember. The first one transpired before I completed a full month of blogging, it was completely surprising and largely disillusioning. It mainly had a censoring effect on my subsequent writing. I freely admit that I now avoid writing about certain topics altogether and significantly tone down my writing on many others because I don't have the time or the energy to fight off the potential onslaught of vitriolic comments. Hats off to those who have no such issues, as it looks like there are plenty of bloggers who thrive on these little explosions; honestly, I find them (the kerfuffles) nothing but draining. I don't find them amusing even when they happen to other people. But, I also found that censoring your writing is apparently no guarantee that someone somewhere won't get ticked off by whatever you write: no matter how personal or benign a post, there is always the potential to aggravate people. Oh well. I suppose that's just blogging imitating life.
But, all this negativity is hardly appropriate for a birthday, so off to positive things. What are my favorite aspects of blogging? Bloggy friends and acquaintances, bar none. There are a number of bloggers whose writing I really enjoy for various reasons -- some are serious, some goofy, some focused on the science/academia, some more on the personal aspects, but all are invariably whip-smart and insightful. With some I have connected off-blog. I really cherish the connections to these interesting people whom I would have never met otherwise.
I also appreciate blogging as a means of venting (I am sure Mr GMP also appreciates that I don't offload all -- only most -- of my many frustrations on him!) I enjoy other people's ranty posts and do feel better after writing mine. Moreover, I really enjoy blogging as a creative outlet of sorts. I know blogging does not constitute creative writing, or at least not very high-quality creative writing the way I do it, but the posts I enjoyed writing the most essentially read like essays.
Overall, it's been an interesting year, and in hindsight it does seem kind of long really. I started blogging at the end of my 6th year as a faculty (several months after I learned that I had been approved for tenure) and now is the end of my 7th. I am off to a sabbatical leave, which I am really looking forward to. In the past year, I have graduated four students, two with an MS and two with a PhD, received a couple of teaching awards, written many, many grants, and many, many papers. At the end of June I am expecting a baby on whose name Mr GMP and I have yet to agree. One option for the name would have our three boys' first initials be NMR, which greatly pleases the geek in me. Another option results in NML, the inverse alphabetical order of these letters, also high on the geek-o-meter. A third would yield NMA (enema -- LOL). Perhaps we'll just name him Spawn 3.
Dear reader, I have two orders of business where I need your input. One is a very important issue that has been bugging me for quite some time: what is, in your opinion, the proper name for a blogging anniversary? (You can enter multiple answers.)
My other request is a bit more serious: if you are a regular reader, and especially if you haven't commented much or at all, tell us a little bit about who you are, what you like/dislike about Academic Jungle, and what I can do to encourage you to comment more. Do you read for the academic (research/teaching/funding) content, for the more personal (family/mommy/immigrant) content, or is mixing it all up exactly your cup of tea?
Thanks everyone for reading!
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Sabba-sabba...
Wikipedia tells me "In over thirty languages other than English, the common name for Saturday is a cognate of "Sabbath"," and the same root is that of a sabbatical leave. So what day could be better than a Saturday (usually a slow day in the blogosphere) for writing about my upcoming sabbatical?
Whenever I think of a sabbatical, I think of the chorus in this 1983 song by Culture Club (what can I say? I was an impressionable preteen):
Sabba-sabba-sabba-sabba-sabba-sabbaticaaaaal,
you come and goooooo,
you come and goooo-o-o-oh...
Once I am done grading my final, I will have 15 teaching-free months.
Technically, I am on sabbatical just in the spring (every 7 years, we get 1 semester off at full pay or 2 semesters at 60% pay) but I managed to get the fall off as well through a teaching overload last fall and some course buyout. Next year will be my eighth year as a professor and my first sabbatical. People ask me where I am going; nowhere, as I am about to have a baby. I really cannot leave my poor husband alone with three kids for a significant amount of time, even after the baby is a few months old. Plus, there's the issue of nursing, and the boobs come with me. I suppose I could go somewhere with just the baby, and leave hub with the other two kids, but even that is really pushing it. I think this sabbatical leave is simply going to have to be of a staycation kind.
But this whole sabbatical business got me thinking about how long and how short 7 years actually are. When the time comes for my next sabbatical, my oldest son will start college; my middle son, who's 4 now, will be starting 6th grade; the baby, who hasn't been born yet, will start second grade! Yet, in the grand scheme of one's career, 7 years is really not all that long: we work for 35+ years; 7 years is about two back-to-back 3-year grants, so easily less than the duration of a long-term research project. In some fields, 7 years may be a not-so-uncommon duration of a PhD. It has been 7 years since I received mine.
My sabbatical plans include 3-4 months home with baby while managing research group via email, Skype (loved Namnezia's post "The Portal"), and occasional group meetings before going back to work full time in October or November (depending on when exactly the daycare has an opening for us); writing a gazillion grants and papers; editing a special issue of a journal in my subdiscipline; organizing a fairly major conference in my field in the spring 2012. I may sneak in a few shorer trips with my trusty breast pump in the spring, but otherwise it's business as usual sans teaching.
What I have been looking forward to the most in regards to this leave is trying to reignite the fire between me and my research. As I have written several times before, I am going through a bit of an existential crisis in research, in that I spend a lot of time chasing money to support students and, more often than I'd like, end up doing what's fundable and/or trendy regardless of what I find interesting. The money chasing also leaves me exhausted as I am constantly trying to scratch the surface of ever new problems where the funding is, and seldom have the time to sit down and dive into a difficult, long-term problem with gusto, as I used to be able to as a grad student and an idealistic/naive n00b assistant professor. Somewhere on the tenure track I developed a serious case of research ADD and now it's hard to really focus in depth, which is the type of work that used to give me the greatest pleasure, back in the day when my group was small and I had ample time to work on my own.
So I am looking forward to having some time to learn and grow again, read for real some new technical books, and perhaps even pick up a new technique or two. But maybe I'm just deluded and will end up eating bonbons and watching TV in my PJ's all day.
If you are a faculty and had a stay-at-home sabbatical, what did you do? Did you do all that you planned? Did you end up procrastinating/spending days in your PJ's/watching TV and eating bonbons or was it largely a professionally enriching experience? Was it always better when you went elsewhere for a sabbatical? Do you find it that you are more productive when you come back from a sabbatical, because the structure of teaching and meetings helps you maintain productivity? Even if you aren't a faculty, how would you spend a sabbatical year?
Whenever I think of a sabbatical, I think of the chorus in this 1983 song by Culture Club (what can I say? I was an impressionable preteen):
Sabba-sabba-sabba-sabba-sabba-sabbaticaaaaal,
you come and goooooo,
you come and goooo-o-o-oh...
Once I am done grading my final, I will have 15 teaching-free months.
Technically, I am on sabbatical just in the spring (every 7 years, we get 1 semester off at full pay or 2 semesters at 60% pay) but I managed to get the fall off as well through a teaching overload last fall and some course buyout. Next year will be my eighth year as a professor and my first sabbatical. People ask me where I am going; nowhere, as I am about to have a baby. I really cannot leave my poor husband alone with three kids for a significant amount of time, even after the baby is a few months old. Plus, there's the issue of nursing, and the boobs come with me. I suppose I could go somewhere with just the baby, and leave hub with the other two kids, but even that is really pushing it. I think this sabbatical leave is simply going to have to be of a staycation kind.
But this whole sabbatical business got me thinking about how long and how short 7 years actually are. When the time comes for my next sabbatical, my oldest son will start college; my middle son, who's 4 now, will be starting 6th grade; the baby, who hasn't been born yet, will start second grade! Yet, in the grand scheme of one's career, 7 years is really not all that long: we work for 35+ years; 7 years is about two back-to-back 3-year grants, so easily less than the duration of a long-term research project. In some fields, 7 years may be a not-so-uncommon duration of a PhD. It has been 7 years since I received mine.
My sabbatical plans include 3-4 months home with baby while managing research group via email, Skype (loved Namnezia's post "The Portal"), and occasional group meetings before going back to work full time in October or November (depending on when exactly the daycare has an opening for us); writing a gazillion grants and papers; editing a special issue of a journal in my subdiscipline; organizing a fairly major conference in my field in the spring 2012. I may sneak in a few shorer trips with my trusty breast pump in the spring, but otherwise it's business as usual sans teaching.
What I have been looking forward to the most in regards to this leave is trying to reignite the fire between me and my research. As I have written several times before, I am going through a bit of an existential crisis in research, in that I spend a lot of time chasing money to support students and, more often than I'd like, end up doing what's fundable and/or trendy regardless of what I find interesting. The money chasing also leaves me exhausted as I am constantly trying to scratch the surface of ever new problems where the funding is, and seldom have the time to sit down and dive into a difficult, long-term problem with gusto, as I used to be able to as a grad student and an idealistic/naive n00b assistant professor. Somewhere on the tenure track I developed a serious case of research ADD and now it's hard to really focus in depth, which is the type of work that used to give me the greatest pleasure, back in the day when my group was small and I had ample time to work on my own.
So I am looking forward to having some time to learn and grow again, read for real some new technical books, and perhaps even pick up a new technique or two. But maybe I'm just deluded and will end up eating bonbons and watching TV in my PJ's all day.
If you are a faculty and had a stay-at-home sabbatical, what did you do? Did you do all that you planned? Did you end up procrastinating/spending days in your PJ's/watching TV and eating bonbons or was it largely a professionally enriching experience? Was it always better when you went elsewhere for a sabbatical? Do you find it that you are more productive when you come back from a sabbatical, because the structure of teaching and meetings helps you maintain productivity? Even if you aren't a faculty, how would you spend a sabbatical year?
Monday, May 9, 2011
None and We're Done
I know this issue has been tackled a number of times in the academic blogosphere, but it's a classic and deserves to be revisited (again and again).
I was on a PhD defense committee today. The student is one I know from a couple of my courses, a very nice and personable guy and an average student. His advisor is a colleague and a collaborator; we are together on the grant that this student has been supported on for the past 3 years or so. The student and his advisor (the PI on said grant) have been working on the experimental part of the project, another colleague and I with our joint student on the theory/simulation part.
This student's work focused on the development/assembly of a novel experimental setup. The work was slow and undoubtedly tedious for a long time; much of the time was initially devoted to contacting different vendors and companies for specialized pieces of equipment. When the student presented his research prospectus less than a year ago, the setup was nearly complete but not yet working; it is now finally up and running. I honestly did not think the student would be defending this soon.
The student presented quite nicely (even if a bit longwindedly). My problem? He is graduating without a single journal paper (with a few conference presentations). Criteria for graduation are field specific, so let me make it clear: I am in a physical science field where journal publications are the most important, and many (many!) faculty have the criterion of 3 journal publications, preferably from the dissertation work, as necessary for graduation. I was quite peeved when I realized that this student would graduate with zero papers (btw, I only got to see the dissertation on Friday and it wasn't clear till today what the publication count was). This also means that, after 3 years on the project where my colleague the advisor has been the PI, there are no experimental papers, only theory ones. That cannot bode well for the project's funding continuation.
Now, I understand that the student's project was difficult and with a very long ramp up time, and I understand that perhaps expecting 3 papers may be overkill. But I really wanted to see at least one accepted peer-reviewed journal paper. Heck, I would have perhaps even been OK with a single submitted paper.
I asked the student if there was a reason that he was graduating without a single journal paper; if there was a reason that he must be graduating now and not in, say, a year? Because he finally has the nice setup running, it's time to get some data (he showed some very preliminary data). He said it's because his wife and he had been living apart for some months and he also happened to find a job there. I almost blew my top off -- those are not criteria for graduation. But instead I just said "Well, you have a very nice and understanding advisor."
I am quite pissed with my colleague, the student's advisor, for allowing this. It is his responsibility to be the gate keeper of when the student is ready. I understand that the student wants to join his wife, but he's hardly the only person living temporarily away from a significant other. And he found a job, that's a criterion? At this time, he should not have been looking for a job in the first place. I felt pissed on behalf of all those students who endure separation from their significant others and even kids for much longer than a few months in order to do a proper job and finish. Many people decide the separation is not worth it and abandon their programs close to completion (a person very, very close to me did that) -- they are not handed PhD diplomas just because they miss their families.
How much can we speak of universal graduation criteria in a department versus the discretion of the advisor? In my and related disciplines throughout the world peer-reviewed publications are required in order to get a PhD. A student with a poor quality PhD drags down the value of everyone else's degree from the same institution.
When does a committee member have the right to fail another faculty's student and call the colleague on the bullshit? People don't object to this shit in order to keep the peace with colleagues, because collegial relationships in academia easily span several decades. Heck, faculty often don't object even when there are severe cases of poor advising and neglect of students, how can we expect them to object when the advisor lets one pass with a decidedly subpar record? I should have raised more hell at the defense, but of course it's easy to be bold and eloquent in hindsight. Instead, I wussed out like most people do for the sake of peace. Shame on me.
------------------------
Due to Blogger's demise yesterday afternoon (May 12) it looks like about 10-15 comments posted at various times of the day vanished. If they ever looked like they were successfully posted, then a copy went through to my email and I can rescue/repost them, but the time stamp will be May 13.
I was on a PhD defense committee today. The student is one I know from a couple of my courses, a very nice and personable guy and an average student. His advisor is a colleague and a collaborator; we are together on the grant that this student has been supported on for the past 3 years or so. The student and his advisor (the PI on said grant) have been working on the experimental part of the project, another colleague and I with our joint student on the theory/simulation part.
This student's work focused on the development/assembly of a novel experimental setup. The work was slow and undoubtedly tedious for a long time; much of the time was initially devoted to contacting different vendors and companies for specialized pieces of equipment. When the student presented his research prospectus less than a year ago, the setup was nearly complete but not yet working; it is now finally up and running. I honestly did not think the student would be defending this soon.
The student presented quite nicely (even if a bit longwindedly). My problem? He is graduating without a single journal paper (with a few conference presentations). Criteria for graduation are field specific, so let me make it clear: I am in a physical science field where journal publications are the most important, and many (many!) faculty have the criterion of 3 journal publications, preferably from the dissertation work, as necessary for graduation. I was quite peeved when I realized that this student would graduate with zero papers (btw, I only got to see the dissertation on Friday and it wasn't clear till today what the publication count was). This also means that, after 3 years on the project where my colleague the advisor has been the PI, there are no experimental papers, only theory ones. That cannot bode well for the project's funding continuation.
Now, I understand that the student's project was difficult and with a very long ramp up time, and I understand that perhaps expecting 3 papers may be overkill. But I really wanted to see at least one accepted peer-reviewed journal paper. Heck, I would have perhaps even been OK with a single submitted paper.
I asked the student if there was a reason that he was graduating without a single journal paper; if there was a reason that he must be graduating now and not in, say, a year? Because he finally has the nice setup running, it's time to get some data (he showed some very preliminary data). He said it's because his wife and he had been living apart for some months and he also happened to find a job there. I almost blew my top off -- those are not criteria for graduation. But instead I just said "Well, you have a very nice and understanding advisor."
I am quite pissed with my colleague, the student's advisor, for allowing this. It is his responsibility to be the gate keeper of when the student is ready. I understand that the student wants to join his wife, but he's hardly the only person living temporarily away from a significant other. And he found a job, that's a criterion? At this time, he should not have been looking for a job in the first place. I felt pissed on behalf of all those students who endure separation from their significant others and even kids for much longer than a few months in order to do a proper job and finish. Many people decide the separation is not worth it and abandon their programs close to completion (a person very, very close to me did that) -- they are not handed PhD diplomas just because they miss their families.
How much can we speak of universal graduation criteria in a department versus the discretion of the advisor? In my and related disciplines throughout the world peer-reviewed publications are required in order to get a PhD. A student with a poor quality PhD drags down the value of everyone else's degree from the same institution.
When does a committee member have the right to fail another faculty's student and call the colleague on the bullshit? People don't object to this shit in order to keep the peace with colleagues, because collegial relationships in academia easily span several decades. Heck, faculty often don't object even when there are severe cases of poor advising and neglect of students, how can we expect them to object when the advisor lets one pass with a decidedly subpar record? I should have raised more hell at the defense, but of course it's easy to be bold and eloquent in hindsight. Instead, I wussed out like most people do for the sake of peace. Shame on me.
------------------------
Due to Blogger's demise yesterday afternoon (May 12) it looks like about 10-15 comments posted at various times of the day vanished. If they ever looked like they were successfully posted, then a copy went through to my email and I can rescue/repost them, but the time stamp will be May 13.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Almost Amusing Adventures of the Sleeping Fatty
I have always liked to sleep, it's one of my favorite activities in the whole world. However, since I became a mom for the first time 11 years ago, I have never had sufficient time to engage in this wonderful passtime. At 32 weeks of pregnancy (so 8 weeks to go), I can no longer resist the unbelievable urge to sleep non-stop. Since I stopped vomiting, I have been drinking decaf coffee, but that's apparently not enough to wake me up or get my blood pressure above 100ish/60ish. Today, after 8 hours of sleep at night, I got up and barely got dressed, and then spent the entire day till 3 pm just napping in my home office (my office chair is the most heavenly butt-and-back support object known to mankind), with my feet propped on my husband's chair. At 3 pm I finally felt I was ready to wake up. So, yeah, in case it's not obvious, I am one Sleeping Fatty.
Yesterday, I had an ultrasound to check the baby's growth, because 3 weeks ago, at 29 weeks, my fundal height was 33 cm (fundal height -- the distance from the pelvic bone to the tip of the uterus -- should measure, after week 20ish of pregnancy, the same in centimeters as the gestational age in weeks, +/- 2 cm. So, at 29 weeks of pregnancy, I should have measured 29+/-2 cm, so 33 cm was too much). The scientist in me had two concerns: my regular nurse wasn't there and the other nurse who measured me looked like she had a problem locating the tip of my uterus; there was a single measurement (reproducibility anyone?) But I didn't say anything and didn't want to downplay the potential for something wrong, so I didn't object when my OB recommended I get a growth ultrasound. Lo and behold, the ultrasound showed I have a big but not gargantuan baby (over 5 lbs, 85th percentile), who will likely be 9+ lbs at birth, but I already knew that (my first two were 9 lb 1oz and 9 lb 2 oz); the amniotic fluid amount is perfectly normal. So nothing weird there. Btw, my regular nurse also measured my fundal height after the ultrasound, I was at 34 cm at 32 weeks -- so only 2 cm ahead as I had been the entire time except at that apparently off measurement at 29 weeks, and perfectly consistent with just a bigger baby. This all means much ado and an expensive ultrasound about nothing. I bet this all could have been avoided with a repeated measurement of the fundal height at 29 weeks, but it's cool I got to see the baby again. He's already head down, and I now know that all the kicks into my diaphragm were the feet on the left and apparently him shaking his little butt on the right.
My low levels of energy and perpetual sleepiness are of course interfering with my work big time. I wanted to draft 2 proposals to be submitted in September/October. There are 4 papers from my group alone that I planned on sending out before delivering (3 of them comprehensive regular articles for a reputable society-level journal and the fourth a 4-pager rapid communication). All of the papers are at the 3rd or 4th draft stage, which would normally mean I would go through 2 or 3 more educational back-and-forths with students, before taking over and cleaning the manuscripts up into submission-ready versions. Now, since I have only 8 weeks left, I have to take over sooner so they'd get submitted while I still have my faculties intact. I do tend to get kind of stupid in the first few months postpartum (sleep deprivation plus hormones) and I really wanted a little break from work. But my motivation has been zero. And I don't even feel guilty enough about it. Clearly, a killer combination...
Since I got pregnant, I have been avoiding taking on responsibilities that I knew I would not be able to fulfill efficiently. I was pregnant before, so I knew that I would be miserable vomiting for a long time, and then near the end of the pregnancy I would be sleepy and big and won't be able to travel. As a result, at the beginning of my pregnancy, I removed myself as the PI from several collaborative proposals and became a co-PI since I knew I could not herd the cats as needed. I also took part in a center grant (many PI's) but refused the role of a co-leader because I knew I could not do it efficiently at this time (and, as it turns out, I would have to fly to DC in month 9 of pregnancy, which is totally not happening).
I am still doing my share in collaborations -- doing stuff when asked and promptly -- I am just not presently able to go above and beyond my share (such as partake in leadership activities). I do feel guilty that someone else might have to do the heavy lifting on some collaborative papers or grants for the time being. One could ask: why should anyone else have to accommodate my personal choice to be pregnant? Prodigal Academic nicely put it in her comment to a recent post that you help out one another because everyone has some sort of family and needs accommodation at one time or another. Unfortunately, I have several colleagues who do not agree with this assessment -- they have stay at home spouses who take care of the children or are childless, and have unequivocally expressed that they resent the fact that some of us may need a bit of slowing down at times, because it's unfair to those who don't need to slow down.
You know, if people never need or want to slow down for personal reasons, I don't see anyone stopping them. I am quite happy to applaud and send them flowers when they get their NAS/NAE memberships, MacArthur Fellowships, or Nobel Prizes. If they are resentful of me for having to slow down temporarily, they can go ahead and find a replacement (only I suppose that's not exactly easy, because I am awesome and irreplaceable... On top of being modest. :-)
My most hard-to-get-a-hold-of colleagues are men with grown children. I am way more responsive to the demands of a collaboration than them even in the most pukey, sleepy, heartburny, or postpartum stupid state, so WTF? But no one ever has anything to say against a perpetually unavailable Prof. BigWig while he's globetrotting, whereas any hint of anything but complete and utter devotion to work (such as utilization of one's uterus or mammary glands) is often greeted with near disgust. Sadly, some of the most terrible comments about having children while in academia that I have ever heard in real life came from a recently married, childless-by-choice female colleague from another department, who started at the same time I did; she took over the co-leadership position on the multi-PI grant after I had turned it down. You'd think she'd know better than to bash childbearing in front of me. We women are truly amazing: we judge each other so harshly and so bitchily that we certainly need no man to make us look like crap or feel like crap about our life choices.
Yesterday, I had an ultrasound to check the baby's growth, because 3 weeks ago, at 29 weeks, my fundal height was 33 cm (fundal height -- the distance from the pelvic bone to the tip of the uterus -- should measure, after week 20ish of pregnancy, the same in centimeters as the gestational age in weeks, +/- 2 cm. So, at 29 weeks of pregnancy, I should have measured 29+/-2 cm, so 33 cm was too much). The scientist in me had two concerns: my regular nurse wasn't there and the other nurse who measured me looked like she had a problem locating the tip of my uterus; there was a single measurement (reproducibility anyone?) But I didn't say anything and didn't want to downplay the potential for something wrong, so I didn't object when my OB recommended I get a growth ultrasound. Lo and behold, the ultrasound showed I have a big but not gargantuan baby (over 5 lbs, 85th percentile), who will likely be 9+ lbs at birth, but I already knew that (my first two were 9 lb 1oz and 9 lb 2 oz); the amniotic fluid amount is perfectly normal. So nothing weird there. Btw, my regular nurse also measured my fundal height after the ultrasound, I was at 34 cm at 32 weeks -- so only 2 cm ahead as I had been the entire time except at that apparently off measurement at 29 weeks, and perfectly consistent with just a bigger baby. This all means much ado and an expensive ultrasound about nothing. I bet this all could have been avoided with a repeated measurement of the fundal height at 29 weeks, but it's cool I got to see the baby again. He's already head down, and I now know that all the kicks into my diaphragm were the feet on the left and apparently him shaking his little butt on the right.
My low levels of energy and perpetual sleepiness are of course interfering with my work big time. I wanted to draft 2 proposals to be submitted in September/October. There are 4 papers from my group alone that I planned on sending out before delivering (3 of them comprehensive regular articles for a reputable society-level journal and the fourth a 4-pager rapid communication). All of the papers are at the 3rd or 4th draft stage, which would normally mean I would go through 2 or 3 more educational back-and-forths with students, before taking over and cleaning the manuscripts up into submission-ready versions. Now, since I have only 8 weeks left, I have to take over sooner so they'd get submitted while I still have my faculties intact. I do tend to get kind of stupid in the first few months postpartum (sleep deprivation plus hormones) and I really wanted a little break from work. But my motivation has been zero. And I don't even feel guilty enough about it. Clearly, a killer combination...
Since I got pregnant, I have been avoiding taking on responsibilities that I knew I would not be able to fulfill efficiently. I was pregnant before, so I knew that I would be miserable vomiting for a long time, and then near the end of the pregnancy I would be sleepy and big and won't be able to travel. As a result, at the beginning of my pregnancy, I removed myself as the PI from several collaborative proposals and became a co-PI since I knew I could not herd the cats as needed. I also took part in a center grant (many PI's) but refused the role of a co-leader because I knew I could not do it efficiently at this time (and, as it turns out, I would have to fly to DC in month 9 of pregnancy, which is totally not happening).
I am still doing my share in collaborations -- doing stuff when asked and promptly -- I am just not presently able to go above and beyond my share (such as partake in leadership activities). I do feel guilty that someone else might have to do the heavy lifting on some collaborative papers or grants for the time being. One could ask: why should anyone else have to accommodate my personal choice to be pregnant? Prodigal Academic nicely put it in her comment to a recent post that you help out one another because everyone has some sort of family and needs accommodation at one time or another. Unfortunately, I have several colleagues who do not agree with this assessment -- they have stay at home spouses who take care of the children or are childless, and have unequivocally expressed that they resent the fact that some of us may need a bit of slowing down at times, because it's unfair to those who don't need to slow down.
You know, if people never need or want to slow down for personal reasons, I don't see anyone stopping them. I am quite happy to applaud and send them flowers when they get their NAS/NAE memberships, MacArthur Fellowships, or Nobel Prizes. If they are resentful of me for having to slow down temporarily, they can go ahead and find a replacement (only I suppose that's not exactly easy, because I am awesome and irreplaceable... On top of being modest. :-)
My most hard-to-get-a-hold-of colleagues are men with grown children. I am way more responsive to the demands of a collaboration than them even in the most pukey, sleepy, heartburny, or postpartum stupid state, so WTF? But no one ever has anything to say against a perpetually unavailable Prof. BigWig while he's globetrotting, whereas any hint of anything but complete and utter devotion to work (such as utilization of one's uterus or mammary glands) is often greeted with near disgust. Sadly, some of the most terrible comments about having children while in academia that I have ever heard in real life came from a recently married, childless-by-choice female colleague from another department, who started at the same time I did; she took over the co-leadership position on the multi-PI grant after I had turned it down. You'd think she'd know better than to bash childbearing in front of me. We women are truly amazing: we judge each other so harshly and so bitchily that we certainly need no man to make us look like crap or feel like crap about our life choices.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Home Is Where the Job Is?
Tonight at dinner, I mentioned to my husband that, even though I have been in GMP Uni City for 7 years now, I don't feel at home. I felt much more at home in the city where we went to grad school, even thought I spent only 4.5 years there. My husband just said "That's because we had friends there. Here, we have no one."
Of course, he's right. It's not that Grad School City was particularly welcoming to foreigners of all stripes (I'd say, quite the contrary), but just the fact that we went to grad school, and were surrounded by other grad students from all around the world, made the barriers to forging friendships fairly low. There were also some people from our home country that we hung out with, but we made a number of American friends and a number of friends from different parts of Asia, Latin America, and Europe. We were quite broke (raising a kid on grad school stipends) but overall it was fun.
The part of the country where we moved is populated by very nice people. They are actually a bit too nice for my taste. I find that all the nicety makes an impenetrable front to honest human communication -- if you are going to have a relationship with someone that goes beyond chitchat and pleasantries, the guard has to come down at some point and you need to show your true colors.
I was actually fairly surprised by some aspects of life in Uni City and State. There are a number of faculty who are from the state or the general area (neighboring states), and came back here to be close to family. Also, from the experiences with the parents of my son's friends, a great number of them too are from the city or its close vicinity, and have the support system of extended family close by. This pattern is common in Europe (people not moving far away from their ancestral homes) and I was surprised to find it in Uni City and State. For outsiders like my husband and me, these close knit circles are quite hard to penetrate; certainly, not helped by the fact that we are actually foreigners, so we must seem, well, foreign to people whose families have lived here for generations.
In terms of making friends at work, this hasn't really worked out all that well. I have two colleagues from the department whom I would perhaps call friends, one is from Northern Europe and the other from East Asia. With my friend from East Asia, we've invited him and his family over a couple of times, and they do come and we have a great time, but it's never reciprocated. It is my impression that their real friends, those with whom they do visit regularly, are all from their home country, so my family does not qualify. My Northern European friend and his family have been quite nice, but his significant other (from a different country) has been pulling to get back to Europe and we've also had some friction as described here, so we have cooled down a bit.
I have close collaborators and a couple of mentors. One of them tells me that you should never have friends from the university -- it's not safe. I agree that on the tenure track you should keep your anxieties and doubts to yourself, because your colleagues do end up evaluating you, but after tenure? Is it still not safe? Perhaps by then it's just too late and the relationships are set in stone. I hung out with some junior faculty who started in other departments at the same time I did, but most were single or married but childless by choice (so different lifestyles) plus everyone was so laser-focused on work and busy that I always ended up looking like a major slacker for actually wanting to get lunch together.
I have some good close collaborators, but we've never crossed the line of actually going to each other's homes. I suppose that's where we will stay. I have a couple of other collaborators with whom all nontechnical communication is so superficial and coated in so much sugar that I am afraid I'll end up with diabetes. I have tried several times to penetrate the sugary barrier of nicety and actually connect with them as real people, but my efforts have always been greeted with additional layers of aloofness, so eventually I gave up.
My husband has an academic staff position and works with a very small group of people, so his pool of acquaintances is not particularly large to draw from (plus, he's not a very social person; he only talks to me because he must and because his tongue will atrophy if he doesn't use it :-). So neither one of us meets anyone outside of work. Perhaps it's true for most people. The people we do meet are our kids' friends' parents, but they never seem interested in hanging out with us.
But, I see that American faculty who are not from here seem much more integrated with their neighborhoods and communities. Part of it is perhaps their church attendance (another thing I did not expect -- a very large percentage of faculty are regular church goers), which is yet another aspect that makes my family ever more foreign. We are not religious at all. Likely, there are other aspects, and it does probably boil down to being foreigners -- I am sure there are many pan-American aspects of the culture that we are simply not familar with, secret handshakes or something..? If there's "Fitting in for Dummies," someone send me a link stat!
I have a friend who's a faculty in a CS department some 5 hours drive from here, at a great school. He also recently complained to me that "there is no one here who ever asks you how your day is going." He says he's contemplating leaving for this reason alone, to get to some place where he and his family wouldn't be so isolated. Someone said that we should hang out with people from my home country. There are three problems with this suggestion: there aren't any around (mine is a small country); if I wanted to hang out with people from my own country, I would have never left it to begin with; just because someone is from my country certainly does not mean we can automatically be friends.
I am not sure what the solution is. I have a good job, we have a nice comfortable life, and the kids are happy and well-adjusted. For my older son, this is home, and he's always very much against moving whenever I mention that we might. Perhaps, as immigrants, this is simply how it has to be: we have to suck it up with no support system so our kids would be comfortable and feel they belong. But it sure would be nice to have someone in real life to vent to.
Of course, he's right. It's not that Grad School City was particularly welcoming to foreigners of all stripes (I'd say, quite the contrary), but just the fact that we went to grad school, and were surrounded by other grad students from all around the world, made the barriers to forging friendships fairly low. There were also some people from our home country that we hung out with, but we made a number of American friends and a number of friends from different parts of Asia, Latin America, and Europe. We were quite broke (raising a kid on grad school stipends) but overall it was fun.
The part of the country where we moved is populated by very nice people. They are actually a bit too nice for my taste. I find that all the nicety makes an impenetrable front to honest human communication -- if you are going to have a relationship with someone that goes beyond chitchat and pleasantries, the guard has to come down at some point and you need to show your true colors.
I was actually fairly surprised by some aspects of life in Uni City and State. There are a number of faculty who are from the state or the general area (neighboring states), and came back here to be close to family. Also, from the experiences with the parents of my son's friends, a great number of them too are from the city or its close vicinity, and have the support system of extended family close by. This pattern is common in Europe (people not moving far away from their ancestral homes) and I was surprised to find it in Uni City and State. For outsiders like my husband and me, these close knit circles are quite hard to penetrate; certainly, not helped by the fact that we are actually foreigners, so we must seem, well, foreign to people whose families have lived here for generations.
In terms of making friends at work, this hasn't really worked out all that well. I have two colleagues from the department whom I would perhaps call friends, one is from Northern Europe and the other from East Asia. With my friend from East Asia, we've invited him and his family over a couple of times, and they do come and we have a great time, but it's never reciprocated. It is my impression that their real friends, those with whom they do visit regularly, are all from their home country, so my family does not qualify. My Northern European friend and his family have been quite nice, but his significant other (from a different country) has been pulling to get back to Europe and we've also had some friction as described here, so we have cooled down a bit.
I have close collaborators and a couple of mentors. One of them tells me that you should never have friends from the university -- it's not safe. I agree that on the tenure track you should keep your anxieties and doubts to yourself, because your colleagues do end up evaluating you, but after tenure? Is it still not safe? Perhaps by then it's just too late and the relationships are set in stone. I hung out with some junior faculty who started in other departments at the same time I did, but most were single or married but childless by choice (so different lifestyles) plus everyone was so laser-focused on work and busy that I always ended up looking like a major slacker for actually wanting to get lunch together.
I have some good close collaborators, but we've never crossed the line of actually going to each other's homes. I suppose that's where we will stay. I have a couple of other collaborators with whom all nontechnical communication is so superficial and coated in so much sugar that I am afraid I'll end up with diabetes. I have tried several times to penetrate the sugary barrier of nicety and actually connect with them as real people, but my efforts have always been greeted with additional layers of aloofness, so eventually I gave up.
My husband has an academic staff position and works with a very small group of people, so his pool of acquaintances is not particularly large to draw from (plus, he's not a very social person; he only talks to me because he must and because his tongue will atrophy if he doesn't use it :-). So neither one of us meets anyone outside of work. Perhaps it's true for most people. The people we do meet are our kids' friends' parents, but they never seem interested in hanging out with us.
But, I see that American faculty who are not from here seem much more integrated with their neighborhoods and communities. Part of it is perhaps their church attendance (another thing I did not expect -- a very large percentage of faculty are regular church goers), which is yet another aspect that makes my family ever more foreign. We are not religious at all. Likely, there are other aspects, and it does probably boil down to being foreigners -- I am sure there are many pan-American aspects of the culture that we are simply not familar with, secret handshakes or something..? If there's "Fitting in for Dummies," someone send me a link stat!
I have a friend who's a faculty in a CS department some 5 hours drive from here, at a great school. He also recently complained to me that "there is no one here who ever asks you how your day is going." He says he's contemplating leaving for this reason alone, to get to some place where he and his family wouldn't be so isolated. Someone said that we should hang out with people from my home country. There are three problems with this suggestion: there aren't any around (mine is a small country); if I wanted to hang out with people from my own country, I would have never left it to begin with; just because someone is from my country certainly does not mean we can automatically be friends.
I am not sure what the solution is. I have a good job, we have a nice comfortable life, and the kids are happy and well-adjusted. For my older son, this is home, and he's always very much against moving whenever I mention that we might. Perhaps, as immigrants, this is simply how it has to be: we have to suck it up with no support system so our kids would be comfortable and feel they belong. But it sure would be nice to have someone in real life to vent to.
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