Nature Chemistry | The Sceptical Chymist

London calling

Every six months or so, I pop over to England to catch up with my colleagues in our London office (NPG’s largest office). I love visiting this city, and it’s not just because I get to use words like ‘skint’ and eat fantastic Indian food every night…

But I was thinking about how difficult it must be for people who move to a new country to start their Ph.D.s/post-docs/jobs – in addition to adjusting to a new lab/co-workers (which can be difficult even if you’re working in a familiar city/country), you have to learn how things are done/how things work in your new environment. As trite as it sounds, so many things can be so different.

For example, I lived in London for two months when I started at Nature, and I’m embarrassed to say that I had to dig out the manual for my combo washer/dryer to figure out how to operate it. (I thought I was doing something wrong because my clothes never came out 100% dry – it turns out that the machine in my apartment didn’t use heat to dry the clothes, just an extended spin cycle…) Even going to the pub can be problematic: we had a German post-doc in our lab who frequently forgot to bring his passport when we went out for drinks. Despite the fact that he was in his mid-30s (and clearly looked old enough to drink in the U.S.), he had a difficult time convincing waiters/waitresses to serve him without ID…

For those of you who changed countries when starting your Ph.D./post-doc/job, I was wondering what little differences were the most frustrating for you? And for those of you who are living in a city/country you know well, how do you help your new co-workers adjust to their new environment? (For example, I’ve heard that some schools/labs distriubte packets that contain local information, FAQs, etc. – are these useful/helpful?)

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Comments

  1. Report this comment

    Catherine said:

    Speaking of needing the manual, Maxine just reminded me that when I was recently in France, I tried using a machine to get a cup of hot chocolate. I put in my Euro (or however much it was), and a cup popped down and the machine started chugging away. After a minute or so of just listening to the chugging without anything happening on my side of the machine, I started to get worried. Then the chugging stopped, and I was left with… a cup. … Well, a cup is always nice, I guess…

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    Andrew Sun said:

    I’m worried more about how different it can be between labs in China and abroad. People here are very casual with their lab operation, without any sense of safety and overlook most of the basic guideline of chemistry lab. Although I myself have read many lab guides, sometimes the condition of my lab is just too bad to for me to follow the guideline too much. Trained in such an environment I’m very worried if I will be look down upon every time I make a stupid mistake in a foreign lab which even an undergrad there would not make. Have you encountered a Chinese PhD who knows little or no lab safety or hazards?

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    Catherine said:

    I haven’t seen that myself, but I have noticed a big culture clash when it comes to people who are from countries where instrumentation is much harder to get access to. In particular, I worked with a couple of postdocs from India who were used to sending their samples away to get NMR data, so while they were definitely experts at assigning all kinds of 1D and 2D spectra once the data was in hand, they really had a steep learning curve to figure out how to get the data. It was really unfortunate because it was hard for a lot of people to imagine that they were so qualified at analyzing data when they didn’t know the first thing about shimming a sample, or even putting it in the NMR in the first place (which unfortunately resulted in 2 tubes getting put in one NMR…).

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    Propter Doc said:

    Andrew – sadly I have encountered a couple of Chinese postdocs with no concept of lab safety. One had such poor comprehension of spoken English that there was simply no way to convey safety information to him. We had to get our other Chinese postdoc to translate, and it still ended up with this guy wandering around the department with bottles of HF. His problem was partly coming from a lab with lower safety standards but mainly that his English was so poor that he couldn’t understand what he was told. He would constantly nod and say “yes” as if understanding but we never found out what he meant.

    I think language is a greater barrier than culture – always go into a new lab in a different country with a completely open mind and be prepared to swallow your pride and ask, ask, and ask again about safety. If in doubt, observe the workers around you, ask why they do what they do, and don’t feel bad if you make mistakes. If you are treated badly because you make mistakes an undergrad would not make, you must try to explain to the group members that there is a cultural difference. That’s really difficult to do but will be very beneficial in the long run and perhaps better by email if you are unsure of spoken English.

    I have found moving from the UK to Canada that the main problem I have is that I speak good English. I can be understood so people think it is very strange when I ask questions about safety or simple things that any Canadian knows (like, how do I get a new pair of glasses in Canada, or how come I don’t get interest on my bank account). I’ve started announcing first that I’m going to ask a ‘baby’ question. Then people know that I’m going to ask a strange question that one would expect a toddler here to know the answer to. So far that approach is working nicely.

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    Andrew Sun said:

    Catherine, that’s true in China too! Not every instrument is open to operation, especially large ones like NMR and GPC for fear of damage.

    Propter Doc, I’m sorry to hear that…fortunately my English isn’t too bad. And I never do things like carrying a flask of HF around…But you did confirm my suspicion of my colleagues going abroad. The worst thing is it seems there’s little I can do to prevent such shame before going abroad. Still, the NMR here is not open for operation…