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)

We’ve just set up a welcome forum for newcomers to Nature Network.

It’s the place to go if you have questions about the site, want to introduce yourself or simply have something you’d like to say that doesn’t fit into one of our existing forums. Oh, and feel free to use it if you’re not so new to the site.

Within the newcomers area, there are three threads – one for Londoners, one for Bostonians and one for members in other cities.

Look forward to meeting you there.