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Hug a visiting researcher today!
17 August 2010
By Hannah Dee
I didn't realise quite how hard it was to settle in to a new place and develop a social life until I took up a contract in France for a year. I only socialised with work colleagues a few times during that period: once, about 8 months in, I took 3 PhD students for a drink. And the same PhD students came to my leaving do. I had coffee a couple of times with one of the students, and I occasionally chatted to other smokers outside, and I went to the departmental Christmas party. That was pretty much it. My linguistic ineptitude certainly contributed to this isolation, but it was still quite a shock to me. Particularly as my former lab had lots of social and semi-social activities (football, maths club, pub trips most weeks, eating sandwiches at the same time most days, journal club, departmental doughnuts every Friday, lots of informal language-swaps between postgrads & postdocs...).
In one UK lab I know of, researchers never socialise. Some have friends outside the lab, and some (those with weaker English skills, normally) just go home and watch DVDs on their own.
I met a researcher the other week who was visiting the UK for 2 months. She was staying in university accommodation above a Thai restaurant, but had not met any of her flatmates. She was working in a lab, but hadn't been invited on any social events and indeed didn't know if there were any. She hadn't been the the restaurant because she didn't like eating alone.
I realise that not everyone expects to socialise at work, and not everyone likes to socialise with their colleagues. But please do spare a thought for those who are in a strange country, and only around for a short time: particularly visiting researchers. At least ask them for a coffee. You could tell them about this blog - it'd be good to have a broader international perspective. And who knows, you might get on!
Roger Boyle17 August 2010 at 10:46 AM
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Seems to me it is part of the duty of management to show minimal hospitality to visitors. But more than that, isn't being welcoming a measure of "quality" - much more indicative of the health of a place than the fatuous metrics we are all chasing.
Tennie Videler17 August 2010 at 07:46 PM
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How welcoming a lab is definitely makes such a difference! I am sure the people in the lab I was in in Glasgow suspected me of being an alcoholic as I kept asking if anyone wanted to come to the pub, in an attempt to be sociable. It took me the largest part of the year I was there to build up any social life. The last lab I was in had a real culture of welcoming people from abroad with people seeing it as the norm to help to find flats, lend bikes, organise welcoming drinks (any excuse really). And it is such a great way to get to know a really rich international variety of people. I agree, Roger, that there should definitely be a 'welcoming' metric in the upcoming REF. Any other metrics that really matter and are currently ignored by the proposed REF?
Sarah Davies18 August 2010 at 03:45 PM
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Being abroad for a while also made me realise how much going for a drink was part of the culture of the UK departments I'd been a part of - and that that culture doesn't necessarily carry across to other places. I've always found in the UK you can usually get at least a few people to join you in the pub at 5pm on a Friday (who *doesn't* fancy a drink - whether alcohol or orange juice - then?). But in the US there are, firstly, no (real) pubs, which makes for a slightly different experience, and, secondly, not quite the same 'going for a drink' culture - hence the 'is this woman an alcoholic'-type looks you get when you assume it's a regular thing. Oh, and Roger - I read your comment as 'it's the duty of management to show minimal hospitality' - ie the less the better. These are straitened times, after all...
Matthew Salois20 August 2010 at 08:34 PM
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Well said, Hannah. I think few things are more important to a new researcher than becoming friendly with the existing staff. I was very thankful when I first started my contract (nearly two years ago) to be invited to the pub and to a staff member's house for dinner. Feeling welcomed was very important to me and helped me to feel comfortable in a completely foreign environment. Your comments, Sarah, made me laugh out loud! I would agree there are no "real" pubs in the US, as I have learned that authentic UK pubs are pretty much that...authentic -- and cannot be duplicated in the counter-drinking American culture. I have found that drinking after work is a far more acceptable (and enjoyable) practice here in the UK.
Andy Humphrey01 September 2010 at 01:00 PM
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I think a lot depends on having a critical mass of people, and also the personalities of a few key individuals. I joined my present institute at a time when there were lots of new arrivals, and an active social life was natural as we were all getting to know one another and getting to know the university. Most of those people have left now (short-term contracts...), grants haven't been renewed so the workforce has shrunk and everybody left is really quite overworked. So there hasn't been the same enthusiasm for socialising across the institute.
Another big change that has taken place is that more and more of the new arrivals (Ph.D. students, visiting researchers, and postdocs when grants are funded) tend to be from the Middle East. The appeal of "going to the pub" as a social activity is pretty much non-existent when offered to workers from a culture where alcohol doesn't feature at all for religious reasons - and the very act of going to the pub can become problematic for the rest of us, if it ends up excluding the non white European staff from the social life of the institute.
Blanka Sengerová01 September 2010 at 06:22 PM
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>>the very act of going to the pub can become problematic for the rest of us, if it ends up excluding the non white European staff from the social life of the institute.
I think going to the pub isn't going to exclude those guys, I suspect they don't really want to come. A few years ago in Sheffield, I organised a Christmas dinner for several groups. As we had quite a few Libyans/Malaysians/etc. in the groups that were going, I specifically picked somewhere where the meat would be halal (curry instead of Christmas dinner!!), but in the end none of them turned up. So I wouldn't worry too much about excluding them by going to the pub...
Hannah Dee03 September 2010 at 10:34 AM
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Some places I've worked have managed to be inclusive in their social activities - for example, having the "Christmas" dinner in January gets round a few problems (people not wanting to celebrate christmas, people having very full diaries in December, restaurants charging extra for rubbish "Christmas" menus...)
And whilst the UK lab can be a fairly boozy social existence, it doesn't have to be - I've heard of labs which get together to play cricket, football, netball, and in one instance even run a "fight club" which amusingly ended up with a PhD student given a black eye by his supervisor. Informal pairings for language swaps, math clubs, and other "self-help" type groups also seem more prevalent in some labs than others.
Sarah Davies03 September 2010 at 12:03 PM
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I also think 'going to the pub' doesn't necessarily entail drinking alcohol, in the UK at least. I have a number of colleagues who don't drink (alcohol) for personal or health, rather than religious or cultural, reasons, but who join in after-work trips to the pub. This is particularly the case in summer, I think - find somewhere with a nice garden and it can just as easily be a trip for a meal or refreshing lemonade...
Andy Humphrey10 September 2010 at 04:08 PM
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True. But when a culture develops where the entire social life of a department is based around the pub, ANYBODY who doesn't want to go to the pub for WHATEVER reason is excluded. Some Muslims, particularly those from the UK, may well be OK about coming to the pub even if they're not drinking; but many others, particularly those from outside the UK, are not comfortable with the idea of entering a pub at all. It's not simply a matter of them "not wanting" to, it's a matter of it being entirely culturally inappropriate.
I think Hannah's suggestions are good ones. In my institute there's a (sporadic) 5-a-side football club, a semi-regular curry club, and similar, in which the Muslim researchers enthusiastically take part.