Dear Group,
I have two things to mention in this posting.
First of all, thanks are due to the many people who responded by
email to my question about the foreign post-doc and the problems she was
having in getting acclimated, especially the language barrier problems.
Her work has started going better and so she is much happier lately.
However, the major problem seems to be English and I think that is simply
going to take time. And since so much of her self-esteem is wrapped up in
her language skills, this is going to be hard for her. Several people
sent along interesting ideas and I have started on several of them, and
they seem to be helping at least a little. First someone suggested
possibly initiating a translation project where I approached her and asked
her help, maybe in translating something out of Japanese into English or
vice-versa. This puts her in the happy position of a.) doing ME a favor
b.) impressing someone with her language skills and c.) practicing
English. I haven't decided what project this will include, but I
mentioned it to a friend in our department who also reads this newsgroup
and she made the excellent suggestion that maybe I could have her teach me
a science technique. I like this idea even better. Unfortunately, it
didn't occur to me at the time, but when her work was going badly I doubt
that she would have been up for that, but now---well, I think this is a
whole new ball of wax!
Other suggestions included trying to find some more Japanese people
for her to talk to, to make friends with, and maybe just to socialize
with. I managed to find a few people who are contacting her and she will
never know I had anything to do with it! (I think she would be
emabrrassed if she knew.) It turns out a former member of this department
who has gone back to Japan, knows some people who very superficially know
of our post-doc. He is writing to them and will ask them to maybe take
her under their wing a little bit. Which I think will be excellent.
Also, people on the West coast especially suggested that I look for
Japanese cultural groups---which I did. Unfortunately, every time I have
attempted to contact them, I haven't been successful---the cultural center
is closed and no one is answering the phone. So I may have to work on
that a little harder. All in all, there ar eno easy answers, but the
thing I have learned from this is that in the future when I meet people
who are contemplating a move to the US from Japan to do a post-doc, I will
try to prepare them for how hard that can turn out to be.
Interestingly, one of the things i have been very interested to
find out is how the Japanese system works. Much different from the US and
SO HARD! Post-docs do get paid almost twice what psot-docs here get paid,
however. On the other hand, being a post-doc sounds almost like a career
there. The heirarchy is set up so differently. At any rate, I think that
is a big shock in coming here---that the money you may have gotten used to
in Japan is about to be drastically reduced!
Now on a totally different tack......there is an interesting group
here dedicated to building self-esteem in adolescent and pre-adolescent
girls. An idea i really liked. Tonight I went to one of their
organizational meetings and I have to admit that while I really liked the
group, (composed of mostly graduate students), I had a few questions that
seemed to frustrate them and left me feeling like a big ol' cynical
meanie. (I am about ten years older than these women...). I basically
wanted to know whether it is really ethical to be instilling in girls the
idea that "science is really cool!" and "I want to be a scientist when I
grow up!" I like the idea of teaching them the wonder of science, but I
also wonder if maybe especially in the older group of girls (13-17), some
mention shouldn't be made of why there are SO many fewer women in science
than there are men. The group IS dedicated to girls after all. They must
wonder why they are being singled out for this group---and why the boys
are being excluded..... Also emphasis was being put on speaking to these
girls so they would really understand and not making things too hard---but
I wonder if maybe that attitude is not also a subtle message that says, "I
have to talk to you like a baby because otherwise you won't understand."
Do boys get talked to that simplistically? In that age group, I mean? I
seem to recall being pretty quick at that age, and also kind of resenting
being talked down to. So I'd like to know.....what are people's thought
on discussing these rather grown up issues with girls who are soon going
to be facing them in various ways? And to the members of this newsgroup
who are mothers to girls---when do you start talking about things like
gender bias and sexism?
Alice
