Homesick

Sometimes,
in the stray moments of a passing day-
between paying the bus fare
and finding a seat-
I find myself staring
at the candy colored currency that occupies my billfold
and the shiny brass coins of this foreign land.

I long for the certainty of the greenback of my childhood.
The unassuming grey green ink,
all cut to the same size;
the thin grey disks of different diameters,
that my fingers recognize without my fumbling eyes.

Washington, Roosevelt, Jefferson, Lincoln, Hamilton, Jackson,
accompanying me through the streets
and into shops,
exchanging hands at the farmer's market, yard sale, for the Craig's List find.
I'll give you a bit of history I learned in school
if you'll give me the comfort of old habits,
known foods, and familiar culture,
both the good and the bad.

Homesick

My partner and I flew in last night to his home town for Thanksgiving. We spent a chunk of the morning going to his favorite cheese store, bakery, and grocery store for our contributions for Thanksgiving dinner. I found myself longing to live again in a place with good food, where I can walk down the street and not be the only non-white face in sight for blocks. I found myself thinking about the job application due at the end of the month that would, if successful, land me in Large City, and give him a doable commute to His Town.

"I wonder why I didn't just take a job in the private sector years ago. I could live where I want," he says on the walk home.

"It's not too late," I reply, surprising myself. I confess to thinking similar thoughts and doubts about our 2-body problem during our shopping trip. "I think being back here has made me homesick. The US, in all its diversity, is my country, my politics, my issues. Its what I know."

We talk about places we've lived and loved, and where we'd like to get back to. As I'm starting to feel the futility and exhaustion of it all, he becomes more positive. "I think it's just that I really hate His Town. Its good for having a small kid, but eventually we will out grow it."

"Maybe I'll get a job in Large City."

"I could see us loving Large City." We talk about what we want to give our son, if we lived in a perfect world, fantasize about having jobs in the same University, where our commutes could become time we spent together as a couple, worry about having jobs we hate.

In the past, when I've thought about leaving academia have been periods when I've been frustrated with my job, or felt stuck or isolated academically, or been exhausted from single parenting. I've been so very happy with my new academic home. I've been busy with new projects. I've been telling everyone that only thing I hate about my new situation is the commute. Where did this sudden surge of misery come from?

US Foreign policy in a nutshell

This occurred at the airport while coming home last week. I arrived to the airport early, so I treated myself to a cup of ice cream. Walking by a fast food counter with no counters, I hear:

Vendor: [Foreign words] helado [Foreign words]?
Me: I'm sorry, I don't speak the language.
Vendors colleague: Is the icecream good?
Me: Yes it is. Thanks.
Vendor (translated by his colleague): Where are you from?
Me: Originally? The US.
Vendor: US! OBAMA! (big smile as he pats his heart.)
Me: Yes, Obama.
Vendor (Realizing a possible faux pas): Is Obama good?
Me: Yes, I am very relieved.
Vendor's colleague: Iran just took down one of your planes.
Me: Oh?!
Vendor's colleague: It was on the TV five minutes ago. It wasn't manned. It was a ....
Me: A drone?


Well, that just about sums up the highs and lows of US foreign policy, doesn't it?

Diva Moment

I think we've all seen this in our colleagues. The initial request. The realization that the request is not fullfillable. The unreasonable stance demanding that the initial request be fullfilled, climaxing to a demand that the world rotate around the needs of one particular scientist (or three year old). We've all seen colleagues do this. We may have seen our children do this. It makes the lives of administrators and parents miserable.

Having said that, I am going through my own diva moment. At the time of writing this post, I've been at University F for about 6 weeks, and I'm still not set up. Which is impressive since I don't belong to a lab. Wireless in my office is poor, and the VPN server won't install on my laptop. I still can't get Skype to interface properly with my desktop. This makes it very hard to meet virtually with colleagues.

I still have at least one government form to track down. Instructions on how to do so are unclear. I have colleagues telling me that I can do so easily on line. I have HR telling me that I need to go to a government office 30 mins away and take a number. Yes, there is a form that I may be able to e-mail in somewhere. No, she will not translate it for me, since the government office knows what to do better than she does. Legally, she needs to withhold half my gross pay until I procure this piece of paper. Oh, and by they way could I go to another office to prove that I haven't committed any crimes in this country before they hired me (ignore the fact that I haven't lived here before they hired me).

Part of the reason I'm not set up is that I've been traveling a lot (and will continue to through November). But the point of transplanting me from my original country to a university much closer to where my potential collaborators are is for me to visit them and try to pollinate some papers. Part of the reason I'm not set up is that my department's IT support is dwindling to 0. Part of the reason I'm not set up is that this country is trying to streamline it's paperwork, but the project is delayed, so instead of automatically issuing paperwork like they used to and will do again, people now have to run to 3 different offices.

I am currently refusing to let paperwork eat more than one day a week of my work time here. This slows down my progress in the pile of administration I need to go through. On the other hand, I think the frustration of standing in lines, and filling out forms in a foreign language is worth more than the interest I will loose on the extra money being withheld. So I'll get to it when I can. If this bothers her, I'll be the diva and she can make life easy for me. If it doesn't, then we are both happier for it.

I feel like such a cad

I was getting on a bus at a decent sized bus depot yesterday in My City. I think I must have been the last person in line. As I'm boarding, a blind man bumps into me.

"Qerdf  spet linwer elst?" he asks. I don't speak the local language, so that's about what it sounds like to me.

I struggle to figure out how much I owe the driver for my ticket, and the gentleman keeps repeating the question to my back. After the third repetition, I gather that he is asking me what bus this is, but I don't know enough numbers to tell him.

I slink off to find a seat, and the bus driver gives him the information he wants. I am so ashamed of myself.

Conference City 2, where we were a few months ago, speaks the same language, and I had a similar experience. Epsilon wanted his own seat on the subway, so he was sitting next to me. An older woman came by and said

"Wer inetr skdong alking lsets. Gtin  klnigs eknoge."

By the time she'd repeated herself 2-3 times, I figured out that she was asking if she could sit in one of our spots, but the woman and daughter sitting across from me got up to let her sit. We rode on, facing each other in awkward silence, until she had the grace to try to talk to Epsilon. At this point it becomes clear that we share limited words in each other's languages and a few smiles break out. I wish her good day at my stop and head back to my hotel, wanting to hide from my shame under the piles of pillows they provide.

I clearly need a better solution to my linguistic difficulties. I'm taking suggestions.

The little things: gastronomic edition

"It's often the little things that make all the difference in whether or not one is happy when moving to a new country." I explain to a grad student after she tells me that, yes, one can get good American style coffee around University F. The more I think about that statement, the more it rings true to me. Especially in the area of food.

Moving from college to the country of my parents origin, I rejoiced in the freshness of the produce available. I didn't understand why anyone would ever want a fridge instead of going to the market every day. I'd never SEEN eggplant so firm and tasty! On the other hand I missed bread with a good crust, and don't even get me started on what passes for cheese over there. Every June found me dreaming of strawberries, and July was spent obsessing over taste of peach juice and the fuzzy texture of peach skin.

When I left to get a degree in economics, I entered a country with a rich cheese history, and I was in heaven. I remember getting to the train station on my way to my new college town, and immediately buying a cheese sandwich from one of nothing special shops at the food court. I think it involved Brie. I still remember the ecstasy. But the people in this country didn't know how to spice their food. I was (still am) convinced that even the black pepper in the condiment packets were less spicy than those sold in the states.

Coming to grad school city, back in the States, I missed the variety of cheeses available in the grocery deli, but thrilled in the fresh peaches available at the farmer's market. This was also where I discovered the wonderful world of heirloom tomatoes and the breadth of mushroom varieties. I even found a woman who grew and sold every dried herb you could think of, and then some. Herbal remedies be damned, I entered a world of taste experimentation. My partner's extensive caffeinated tea selection and my herbal tea collection occupied an entire shelf of the pantry.

The farmer's market in postdoc city (the first move listed so far that does not involve changing countries) is the only place I've ever seen that puts the marketing experience in my parent's country to shame. The heirloom tomatoes were a disappointment, but the corn and lettuce... I did not find a replacement for my herb seller, but we had a wonderful coffee shop in our neighborhood that introduced us to the wonders of different beans from different parts of the world.

So now that it is hard to get a farmer's market near University E, or American style coffee at a coffee shop, I've decided to cut fruit out of my diet in grief and be grumpy about the coffee for part of my week. This weekend, I found a man who sells seedling of every herb you've ever heard of, and then some. He must have had at least a dozen types of thyme for sale. It'll be more work and less variety than opening up and smelling jars of multi colored leaves in Jenn's stall, but pulling flowers and leaves from my garden for me tea will definitely be more fun. Now I just need to find more planters!

Falling in love

University F feels like a real city, or at least the area around University F does. Walking down the streets to various meetings with HR and banks and IT and whatnot, I pass small boutique shops, bars and restaurants with outdoor seating, used bookstores at the "garden" level with bikeshops and musical instrument shops above them. There's a group of women walking in front of me exchanging stories and laughing as they return from their lunch break. Its been a long time since I've been able to wander streets like this freely. I've missed it. I think I've developed a crush on this city.

Getting 12 hours of sleep last night, along with blackout curtains and a beautiful sunny morning hasn't hurt, of course. Nor has the fact that my office has floor to ceiling east facing windows. It's clouded over now, but I still find a part of me wishing that I could stay and explore this city, language barrier be damned, and get to know it.

Then again, I fall in love with cities with the same bad habits of a chain monogamist. I have a completely irrational need to love where I live, to feel like I belong there. Up until arriving here, I was determined not to love where I live, not to learn the language, not to enjoy any aspect of my stay here except my work. Now, I find myself looking for running trails near campus, and making note places that look interesting to go for dinner, and checking out book stores to see if they have an interesting English language collection, wondering if I should invest in language learning tools.

I shouldn't I know. These are bad habits that will only lead to heartbreak when it is time to leave. It seems these are bad habits I cannot be happy without. I can always hope that my city crush will keep the misery of leaving my partner and Epsilon every week at bay for a while.

Emmigration Surprises

University E town is the closest I've ever been to living in a small town.* Normally, I find myself somewhere between scoffing at and terrified of living in a small town. But I have to point out a few cultural differences that I am finding quite pleasant.** I have no idea how much of this is due the the universal small town nature of things, and how much is cultural/geographical.

1. Blackberry bushes. Epsilon LOVES picking blackberries off the bushes and popping them in his mouth. (Then wiping his hands on his shorts, but that's a different matter.)
2. Wildflower fields next to campus. I have a soft spot for wildflower fields, since one of my earliest memories is being chased out to play in the wildflowers in the undeveloped lot next to our house.
3. Busdrivers who stop and chat while I find my change, and who wait while I struggle to get my toddler of the bus from the back. I think this is cultural, since I've noticed this, to a lesser degree in larger cities in this country as well.
4. Clothes lines. Everyone has them, so no one looks at me like I'm bringing down my neighbor's property values buy hanging up my sweaters.

*Technically speaking, the town University E is in is smaller than the neighbouring town with good bus and train connections I'm living in.

**All opinions stated in this post subject to change as I actually get to know my neighborhood better.

Keyless

A friend of mine once said that he hated having too many keys on his keyring. Each key represented a responsibility to him. He couldn't drop them and go travelling whenever the urge took him.

I was 19 and the idea of travelling was appealing. Three years later, when I graduated from college and changed continents for the first time, I found myself keyless for several month. I flipped out. For me, it would seem, a house key represents stability and community.


I am currently in the middle of my fourth transcontinental move, and my unease at not having house keys has only diminished a little. This is not an unusual situation for academics, and PLS and Dr. Becca have talked about their feelings on this recently.

I'm trying to put a positive spin on things right now, so I won't focus on the fact that I miss hanging out with Epsilon's friends' parents, or the problem of being science lonely, or the difficulty meeting people without a cohort of gradstudents.

Our last major move (to First Postdoc Town) was when Epsilon was -.25 years old. As my partner pointed out, it is a lot easier to meet neighbors with a 2.75 year old than with a -.25 year old.

My partner's department has a lot more people with kids Epsilon's age than my postdoc department did. This means there is a real chance of making friends with people with whom we share more in common than our kids.

One of my partner's colleagues is a friend of his from grad school. He has been in this department for longer, and is a very social person. He's taken it upon himself to drag my partner out to meet people. As a result, we have a bit of a social network set up near University E already.

When I move to University F, while I'll have linguistic difficulties in meeting people outside the department, I've heard rumors that it is a very friendly and social department. This means that there is some hope that I can knock on office neighbors' doors and grab people for lunch. If the main social activity for the department is drinks/dinner after speakers, Epsilon's sunrise wakeups won't keep me from attending.

Its a plan. Not a great one, but a plan. A friend of mine wrote me when I was complaining about this move

Moving only sucks for a few weeks! You've had an amazing adventure with your family that most people in the world would never be able to have!!

She dreams of picking up her family and going backpacking through Europe. I dream of PTA meetings and watching Epsilon's friends grow up. She's right of course, about the adventure and the privileged position we are in. I'll feel better once I have two sets of house keys in my hand.

Glitches

Lesson 1: Never make a job decision based on which routes low fare airlines fly.

When my partner had a job in Chicago, I commuted back and forth during fall and spring term. Fall term, there was an direct flight from a near by airport at a good time. By spring term, that had disappeared, and I had to go a bit further to a larger airport to make the commute work. This is part of the reason why it was a 10+ hours door to door commute twice a week for me. You'd think I'd learn. When I accepted my post doc at University F, there were several direct flights a day from the local airport to an airport an hour away from University E. All told, it would take me 4.5 hours each way. Not great, but it could be worse. Those flights don't exist any more. Now I can either fly at odd times from a different small airport an hour away by train, or I can land at a major airport 2.5 hours and a couple transit changes away. Not cool.

Lesson 2: Craigslist is better than a rental agency.

We spent the last several days looking for rental properties. We saw 13 houses in 2 days. We found a house that we really like, with a very friendly and helpful landlord in a good location. The landlord would love for us to have moved in last
weekend. We would love to have moved in last weekend. The rental agency
couldn't possibly have us moving in until Wednesday. Some of the delay is
understandable. These agencies exist to take the risk off of the renter and the
landlord by providing credit checks and other screenings. Some of the delays involve steps that could have happened before we saw the house in the first place. At least it's almost Wednesday.

Lesson 3: International moves always take more time than you expect.

The movers have been bugging us about where to send our stuff for the
last few weeks. It's been sitting in port accruing fees for a while
now. However, we haven't had an address to send our furniture to until
Saturday. Calling them on Monday with an address, we find that they
need 2 weeks notice. Lovely. We begged and cajoled and just heard that they will try to have our furniture to us by Friday. Every time I visit the country of my parent's origin, I think about buying a mat for sleeping on the floor. Every time, the hassle of transporting it overrules and aesthetic or practical desire to own one. Too bad really. It would have come in handy for Wednesday and Thursday nights.

Internetless for 3.5 weeks

Well, I'm back. I think this time for good. Chez Barefoot has just completed 8 weeks of travel through 3 continents, and are about to have a house again. Exciting times!

To recap: We left our old house on June 12 to go to Conference City 1. We had a lovely hotel room with 2 balconies, one of which looked over a tram line. Every morning, Epsilon would wake up and go sit on the balcony waiting for the trams to run under his window. After the conference, we took a few days to sight see around the area, and introduce Epsilon to the ocean and the magic of tide pools.

It rained in Conference City 2. This was a much larger city than CC1, and we were put up in a soulless large brand name hotel in a major tourist center. The advantage of this is that Epsilon got to take lots of tour buses and boats. There were views of trams and excavators from our hotel window here as well, but it was not nearly as exciting. CC2 is a somewhat near University F. The rain and the cold in the city did not do much to make my look forward to my move there.

We had a week before conference 3, so we spent it with a my partner's colleague in Friend's City 1. I've been to FC before, 10 years ago with my partner and his sister. I'd hoped to revisit some of the places I'd loved before, but travelling as a group of 20 somethings is very different than travelling with a kid. Still, FC is as beautiful as I remembered it being. We were able to take Epsilon swimming in the ocean again. I taught him to ride the waves "like a roller coaster."

I didn't really get to see much of Conference City 3. The conference hotel was far from the conference location, so we were away for 11 hours of the day. It was an amazing conference, so I wouldn't have minded at all if not for the fact that I never made it back for the little guy's bed time. Epsilon went to see a lot of old churches and palaces with his father.

The transition to Friend's City 2 was difficult, in so much as going in a large hotel near the center of town in a rich country to a two room apartment shared by 4 adults and 2 kids in a poor country needs a large emotional gear shift. Once I'd put my guilt at being born well off aside, the visit there was as lovely as it always is. The friend we stayed with for 3 weeks has a daughter a year older than Epsilon. I'd say they got along famously, if not for the fact that I try not make this blog a fiction. They had enough fun together that I hope they grow into each other as the years go by. My partner and I have been visiting FC2 every couple years for more than 10 years now.  That's enough time to look back an see the progress the city has made. Perhaps not as much as other cities in developing countries, but progress nonetheless. Which brings me to my internet silence for the duration of my visit. It used to be that most people in FC2 did not have computers at home, so it was easy to find an internet cafe in any part of town. Now, as highspeed connections have become available all over the city, these cafes can only be found in the tourist and poorer parts of town (and in the latter case, open only in the evenings after work.) My friend, of course, does not have a computer at home.

Our travels are now over. We are staying in a hotel in University E's city, waiting to have a house to live in.

Emmigration Fears: Playgrounds

One of the problems our new 2 + epsilon body problem faces is the fact that I do not speak the language in my new academic home, while my partner does in his. This is not a problem for the actual job part of my new situation, since all academic (and most bureaucratic) business at University F is conducted in English, or at least bilingually. This will pose a problem in terms of my going out and meeting people. (This is fine, since I'm dead set against forming any social life or growing any emotional attachment to my new city.)

My lack of linguistic compatibility was one of the driving factors to have Epsilon live with his father. And over the past 4 months, since we've made that decision, the following conversation has been very common:

"How well do you speak City Language (CL)?"
"Not at all."
"How are you planning to learn CL?"
"I'm not."
"But surely, you'll pick it up from Epsilon."
"Epsilon's not going to live with me."
"Why ever not?"
"I don't particularly feel like single parenting where I don't speak the language."
Insert variation on how hard can it be.

The last two weeks, my partner and I have attended conferences at countries where we do not speak the language. While one parent attends talks, the other visits interesting parks and beaches. In general, it's been a very nice experience.

There's a but. Otherwise, why the setup?

How do you tell a 5 year old not to throw sand in your son's eyes when you don't know the word for sand, or son, or child, or eye. How do you tell a kid to share if you don't know the word for share. How do you have small talk with the other parents at the playground (because really, watching your kid go "wheee" down a slide is only interesting the first 5 times he does it) when you don't know much beyond hello, thank you, please, and excuse me. Playgrounds for these last two weeks have been an extremely isolating, disempowering and humiliating experience.

There are many linguistic difficulties with single parenting. I think I believe that for most of the really essential ones,  (the doctor, the pharmacist, the day care providers) I can get by with English. But there is so much more to parenting than that. I've been citing playground interactions as an example of why single parenting in a foreign tongue may be a challenge. At this point I can sadly declare that my fears were correct, spitefully tell my nay sayers to go fuck someone until they have a kid and do it themselves, and confindently know that I've made the right decision for everyone who matters.

More thoughts on Emmigration

Every summer it seems I have to board a plane for 10-15 hours to hit
my small conference circuit. Up until this year, every year, I have
grumbled about the hassle of getting on flights and traveling
alone. This year, we packed up our house, handed the keys to the
landlord, and got on the plane as a family. That seems to have made
all the difference.

It will be nice, starting September, to live in a part of the world
where the research I do is popular. It will be a lot easier to hop on
a plane for an hour or two, or a train for 3 or 4 to get to my
conferences, rather than have to sleep sitting up in economy, and fail
to sleep in my hotel room due to jet lag.

We have officially left the US, though we haven't settled in our new
homes yet. The dreaded emmigration has occurred. In the mean while,
First Conference City, is offering pleasant weather and a plethora of
good vegetarian options. The streets are filled wit bikers,
pedestrians and fresh vegetable stalls. I know this is a smaller city
than where I will be in September, but it is making me feel like I can
survive the upcoming year.

My father's visit

My father came to visit over Mother's Day weekend. We leave in a month, and it was a chance for him to see the family before we do. My father moved to this country to start a new life when he was 24. He still has strong ties to his home country, but he's lived here for almost 2/3 of his life. Yet, in spite of that experience, this move is making him feel like we are leaving him somehow. No amount of reminding him that I was about a 2 hour flight away from him in grad school, a 4 hour flight away from him now, and will only be a 6 hour flight away from him in September seems to help. We are emigrating, and something about having to pass through customs between getting off the plane and picking up one's luggage has an air of finality about it.

So my father came to visit, to see me, but especially to see his grandson. "Who knows when I'll see him next," he muses. It was sweet to see him with Epsilon. The generational divide between my father and I has always seemed to be an unbridgeable abyss. As of last weekend, it didn't seem to exists with Epsilon. The fact that his grandfather didn't really hide during our games of hide and go seek only made finding him easier and therefore more fun; and my father loves to read. Whenever I lost track of Epsilon, I'd find him curled up on my father's lap in the rocking chair with a book.

On the adult end, we all managed to keep matters civil, which was very nice. Though at one point he asked me about the classes I'm teaching. My father is a professor: he's also a medical doctor.
"Are the lectures you give chalk talks or power point?"
"They are on the board?"
"Is everything you teach on computers and in books? Or do your students have to memorize everything like I did when I was a student."

And I just don't know how to respond. Would he have been able to find the material for my undergraduate class in a textbook if he were to take its equivalent in the 1960's? Almost definitely. Do my students memorize facts in the same way that he did to get through college? I certainly hope not. And I won't even begin to explain a graduate level topics class. But it leaves me wondering. How do I bridge the gap between a theoretician who fled from medicine in part because of my parents stories of the rote memorization involved to a man who values engineers over their theoretician colleagues, and does not understand the point of my science, since it will never help solve problems that he faces and understands in life.

Emmigration fears II: Taking a pay cut

This post has a happy ending.

As we move up along the academic ladder we expect to earn more money. Not an earth shattering statement to open a blog post with but relevant. When my partner got his offer for a TT position at University E, after currency conversions, we found that he'd be earning as much as I am now as a post doc. He's in a field with average salaries lower than my field, and it was a significant raise from his post doc, so we only had a few misgivings. Then we were told by many that the tax rates in that country are very high. Normally, I don't pay a lot of heed to "they'll take all your money in taxes" talk, because we will be purchasing more services with those tax dollars than we do in the US. However, given my already strong reluctance to emigrate, I let this become a concern.

On my end, I don't know how much I'll be earning at my new postdoc. Apparently the calculation of that amount depends on a lot of paperwork, some of which I've been slow to supply. But, from the estimates I've been given, I'll probably take a cut in my gross pay as well. Again not a reason to turn down a job, but enough for my ego to grumble.

We spent a good chunk of yesterday dealing with financial and immigration minutiae: dull, dreary, stressful work. At one point, I looked over my partner's shoulder to see what his monthly take home pay was. I was surprised. He is taking home significantly more than I am each month. After he qualifies as a single parent for purposes of taxes, he'd be bringing home more.

We get the same net pay. I pay less in taxes, but then I also pay for healthcare for Epsilon and myself. My partner pays for universal healthcare in taxes. I contribute to an employee matched defined contribution retirement fund. He contributes (less) to a defined benefit pension. If I were to stay in this job until retirement, unless I managed to retire in the midst of another phenomenal stock market bubble, at my current contribution rates, the benefits I will receive due to my accumulated contributions will be less than what he will receive from his pension.

By the end of my career if I stay in the States will I likely be bringing more home after taxes and other necessary incidentals? Probably. On the other hand, if I wanted a job for the money, I'd do something else. The lesson I'm taking away from this is that sometimes a pay cut isn't.

To Do

Visa arrangements for Epsilon to live with his father.

Work visa for me.

Notarize letters to make sure Epsilon can travel internationally with only one of his parents.
 
Find housing for myself (apparently this can't be done when I arrive.)

Figure out where all the money my current university owes us is, so we get reimbursed before closing out accounts.

Fill out paperwork to get the rest of the money.

Find 3 movers, and get quotes. (Why don't they call us back?)

Find cleaners to come in and clean the house after the movers have packed it up.  (Again, why don't they call back?)

Figure out when parents/in laws are coming into town so we can give notice to day care provider.

Travel visas for Epsilon for our complicated summer conference/ vacation travel plans.

Fill in legs of tickets between conferences.

There's 6 weeks left before we move. Its starting to feel overwhelming. The relative ease with which moves are conducted in the US has spoiled me. If I'm going to be country hopping for the next few years to try to get all three of us in the same university, I'd better get used to this.

Friends with kids: A fresh start

This is the third and last in my series about the discussions my partner and I have had about the continuous process of making friends and moving while having a child. In the last two installments, I discussed how people with children have featured more prominently in our friend pool, how our schedules sometimes exclude socializing with young, night shifted professionals, how energy levels and candidate pools have effected who we socialize with and when. In September, we get to start over again in our new homes. Here I've listed a few plans to battle loneliness in the upcoming years.

As usual, comments, advice and stories from fellow educated tumbleweeds are welcome.

One of the mistakes we made in our current location is that we didn't activly befriend permanent people in my department who have children of the same age or slightly older than us. We mostly socialized with other post docs in the same position as us. The longer a person has lived in an area, the more likely they are to have a larger network of friends with children we can tap into. My partner has made friends with several such people at University E. We hope to encourage them to help us meet people.

These last few years, I have spent a lot of time trying to find other parents that may also be socially interesting to me. I have specifically shied away from socializing with intersting academics in a setting where I am a parent. This is my shortcoming, and as much as I may wish it away, it will not disappear by September. My partner, fortunately, does not have this fault. We hope to invite many people from his department over to our house for a weekend brunch or some quiet evening activity. As I look back, there are many people in my department who may have understood and/or enjoyed spending time with Epsilon, if we had taken the chance and expended the effort. Now may not be the time to start making this social gamble, but September almost certainly is.

As I will be living several hours away from my partner and Epsilon, near University F, my problem of making friends will be different. It will be easier in some ways. Without Epsilon around, I will not have a domain of my life while I am near my colleagues where I feel embarrassed to interact with them. I enjoy the part of academic life that involves going out for drinks and dinner after a seminar. I look forward to taking full advantage of these occaisions. I need to make sure that I aggressively insert myself into the social life of the department.

In this discussion, I should note that there are multiple reasons why I am not thrilled with the physical location of University F. Without Epsilon to aid in my intergration into society outside of the university, I will probably be isolated outside of work.  My only other socialization will be when I come home near University E. Past experience has taught me that not having any part of my life outside an academic setting makes me very grumpy. This is a problem I will have to tackle.

Friends with kids: Lessons we've learned

I feel like making friends as an early career academic is like trying to set down roots as a very educated tumble weed. This is part two of my thoughts on making friends while having a child, an unsolved 2 body problem, and a career that asks me to move across and between countries every few years. Comments and experiences from other educated tumbleweeds are very welcome.

Last time I tried to describe how the people we felt comfortable associating with had changed drastically pre and post Epsilon. Before his birth, we hung out with other graduate students, post docs and young professionals. We didn't see much of our neighbors. We met people by playing sports or participating in religious/cultural activities, and built friendships by inviting people over for dinner or games or drinks.

Now we choose housing by which neighborhoods have lots of children, and hang out with our neighbors as toddlers and preschoolers play in a lawn. We meet parents at parks and religious/cultural activities, and arrange play dates. Our favorite time to have people over is breakfast or lunch. Philosophical discussions over dinner mostly concern why the engine on the plastic train is not running.

We've muddled through these last few years for better or for worse. But we get a fresh start come September, and my partner and I have been trying to take lessions from the last 2.5 years.

The first notable point is that we have less time and energy to devote to making friends than we did before. In fact, our energy levels have dropped to the point where it is hard to try something new, or try again after something didn't work. We've settled into a pattern where we try to do something fun every weekend, to cut the boredom of having the same three conversations with Epsilon every Saturday and Sunday. That has helped, but it hasn't fixed our loneliness. This is something to change next year.

The second point is that ideal current friend pool, the intersection between interesting people, interesting professionals, and parents is not as large as it may first appear. Some academics with kids are unfortunately academics who are married to a parent. Conversely, the family events organized by the campus women's group are largely populated by stay at home mother married to academics. Similarly, mothers I meet in other settings are often not devoted to a career. I have nothing against mothers who take time off for their children. It is a choice I could never make. However, since so much of what I love about life is my science, I have a hard time bonding with a person who doesn't understand having a passion for one's career. At a time when my 2 body problem consumes so much of my life, it is hard to make such friends empathize with or even understand the decision to repeatedly tear our family apart.

This is not to say that I have found no meaningful relationships in this intersection. Rather, if I had known the probability distributions of who I may encounter in which setting, it would have saved me a lot of frustration and heartbreak early on.

Third, as lunch is now one of my favorite times to meet people, I should take advantage of the fact that lunch is a convenient time to socialize with people on campus. There was one year when I (and my partner when he was aroud) managed to schedule weekly lunches with a grad student from a different department. We all looked forward to those meetings. She has since moved on, and I haven't found a replacement engagement. That is a mistake I should not wait until September to mend.

Finally, as much as I lament having to leave old friends behind, or have friends move away, I have learned in the past few months how much a few regular (daily/weekly) e-mails or phone calls to people in distant cities can do to revive the embers of friendship, and to make me feel connected to people I may see less than once a year. Before I started this blog, I tried mass e-mails to friends on a roughly monthly basis to no avail. More frequent, specific e-mails to specific people, while a lot more work, has paid off for me in an amazing way.

Friends with kids: the shifting pool

My partner and I have started some planning for our impending emigration. In the process, we've started talking about the different situations we will find ourselves in with regards to making friends. He'll have Epsilon in a department where he knows  peoples, I'll be alone in a new department and commuting to them every weekend. In this series I'll try to collate our thoughts and write them down.

Sometimes making friends in as an academic feels like building a community while being a highly educated tumble weed. I welcome any insights and experiences from my fellow tumbleweed readers.

Epsilon was born a few months after we made a significant move to start my current post doc. We knew no one in this part of the country, and the logistics of seeing old friends is difficult enough that it rarely happens. One of the first things we noticed is that it was very easy to meet people with a kid. By the time Epsilon learned to like dogs, we knew every dog walker on the street. Well before that every neighbor who was of a grandparent's age knew our little family as well. We became friends with those of our immediate neighbors who had children.

At the same time, the people we met outside our neighborhood were very different. At the religious organization I attend periodically, it seemed that giving birth graduated me from the group of "young adults" to the group of "full fledged adults." Instead of hanging out with the young, post college/early career crowd I was used to, I found myself surrounded by older women who wanted to coo over the bundle in my arms. There were also some other young mothers there as well that I organized play dates with. But it was very hard to make friends with young childless people.

The colleagues I socialize with outside of work, as a result, are those who also have small children. I know very little about the lives of other post docs in the department. The people in my group I socialize with while at work, but see very little of outside work, no matter how interesting I may find them socially or scientifically.

Part of the problem is scheduling. Given Epsilon's early bedtime and early mornings, it is hard to go out as a couple with people after 7. Sometimes we manage to invite people over for after dinner drinks or games, but often the noise level involved causes problems with Epsilon. Part of the problem is my discomfort with the mixing of my parental life with my academic life.

The result is that our new friends set would be unrecognizable to either of us from our graduate student days. We had very few friends with children before Epsilon. After Epsilon, that ratio has literally been inverted, at least locally.

Emmigration fears: I

A few years ago, I found myself sitting across the table from a Brazilian at a conference dinner, when the conversation turned to a recent act of racial violence in his country.

"Race relations are a lot better in the US," he told me. When I argued against him, citing our history of slavery and Jim Crow and more recent immigration woes, he replied, "You talk about it in the US, and thus you are more aware of it. It doesn't mean the situation is actually worse there."

Those words ring in my ears every time we visit the library for Epsilon. We live in a fairly urban part of the country, and virtually every book Epsilon takes an interest in, that is not populated by animals, has African, Hispanic and/or East Asian looking characters, male and female. In fact, he's found a vehicle series with minor characters of my ethnicity. (That never happens!)

Before Epsilon was born, when we were considering adopting, probably an African American child, we were told to make sure that we had lots of books where the child's ethnicity was prominently featured. Then the adoption agency showed us several books that were about being black. The example books were about race; they were painfully self consciously aware of race. I remember thinking, if I my mother brought home books like this for me from my white suburban public library about my ethnicity, it would not have helped me be more at ease in my skin*. Since Epsilon's birth, I have been so very grateful to my public library for the ease with which it celebrates the racial diversity of my town and my country.

Thinking of my Brazilian's colleagues comments, I asked my partner to look at the picture book sections of the public libraries near University E. He also looked in a neighborhood where a colleague with a toddler lives. The results are not promising. Books that deal with diversity as a normal part of life can be found near University E, but we would have to be aware of the situation, and try to steer Epsilon in that direction, rather than trust that the frequency is great enough that Epsilon will naturally pick up a few.

There are some things I will miss about this country.


*I have nothing against books about race. I've written about one I really like. But there is a fundamental difference between a book written to point out racial differences, in however positive a light, and one that treats it as a natural part of life.