A supermarket on every corner

Well, it’s official. We are now almost completely surrounded by supermarkets on our city block (three of four corners are occupied), so that soon it will be impossible for me to leave my house without encountering a supermarket. The Turkish convenience store with its friendly proprietors and wonderful variety on one corner closed a few months ago after losing its license to sell beer. And as is always the case when that happens in Norway, they go out of business rather quickly, whether or not they are a small grocery store or a restaurant. You cannot survive without the beer or liquor sales. The same will happen to one of my favorite pizza restaurants right down the road from us; they lost their liquor license a few months ago and that will most likely be their death knell.

Back to the supermarkets. I googled supermarkets in Norway and retrieved this Wikipedia listing. This then is a list of supermarket chains in Norway, broken down into Discount stores, Supermarkets, Hypermarkets, and Convenience stores. To me, they’re all variants on the same theme—supermarkets, large or small.

·         Discount: Bunnpris, Coop Marked, Coop Prix, Kiwi, REMA 1000, RIMI, Rimi Stormarked

·         Supermarkets: Centra, Coop Mega, ICA Gourmet, ICA Supermarked, Meny, SPAR, Ultra

·         Hypermarkets: ICA Maxi, Coop Obs!, Smart Club

·         Convenience Stores: ICA Nær, Joker, 7-eleven, Narvesen

I wouldn’t mind being surrounded by supermarkets if they offered a real variety of groceries, in other words, if they were different from each other. But they are not. Two of the supermarkets are the same chain—Joker (I know, what a name); the other one is Bunnpris (literally translated as ‘bottom price’). I have no major problems with any of them, just that they all offer homogeny. It’s all the same, a standardized foodstuff menu with limited choices. If you want slightly more variety and breadth of choice, you have to go elsewhere, like ICA Maxi, Centra or Meny. Thank God they exist. What makes me laugh is that this is such a small country; at last count, roughly 5 million people. Why do we need so many supermarkets? Soon there will be one supermarket per 100 people or per one large apartment building. I’m not joking. I cannot understand how they all can turn a profit. I’m not sure it matters to the food chain owners, who are wealthy beyond belief. All I can say is, ‘oh bliss--I no longer have to walk too far to find a grocery store’ (a little sarcasm never hurts). 

Treating customers well

Just had to comment on a pleasant experience today with a large company. It’s not every day that you deal with a customer service department in a huge company that actually treats you well, solves your problem for you, or even gets back to you on the same day that you contacted them. All that happened to me today in my dealings with Amazon.com. I had purchased a DVD TV series for several hundred dollars back in May of this year, and it arrived in Oslo in late June when we were on vacation in Germany. Unfortunately, the post office in Oslo only allows the packages to sit in their buildings for fourteen days, so as we were on vacation for about this amount of time, the package was returned to Amazon before I had a chance to pick it up. I contacted Amazon in mid-July to register this incident as a return, and received an authorization number so that I could track the return process and when the package was logged in as ‘returned’. As it took almost eight weeks for the package to arrive in Oslo initially, I figured it would take about the same amount of time for it to arrive back in the USA from whence it was shipped. Due to other matters, I didn’t have a chance to check on the status of the return until today, three months after I first contacted Amazon. I wrote to the customer service department as the package had not been returned by me but by the post office, so that the return process was irregular. I received an email within a few hours from not one, but two customer service reps, within a few hours of each other. The first one wrote to me to tell me that the package had been returned and that it would be no problem for me to get my refund. The second one wrote to tell me the exact amount that would be refunded and how my Amazon gift card and credit card accounts would be credited. No fuss, no bother, no ‘please contact this or that person’ in a long chain of persons, no recriminations or criticism on their part concerning the irregular return process. Rather, personal emails to me that said that they understood that I was disappointed that I had not received my package and that the refund process was initiated and that it would not take long for me to receive my refund, respectively.

How great is this? This is a huge global company at this point in time, and yet they managed to get back to me the same day I wrote to them. Not only that, they managed to resolve the situation immediately. I am a regular and good Amazon customer and have been since the late 1990s. I have never had a customer service problem with this company, which in and of itself is pretty amazing. Their efficient, fast and friendly customer service ensures that I remain a loyal customer. Why is it that they manage this absolutely crucial aspect of running a business—providing excellent customer service--whereas other companies fail so miserably? At Amazon, it seems that the customer is always right. At least that’s been the case in my dealings with them. It just goes to show that just because a company is large doesn’t mean that we need to abandon all hope of being treated well as a customer. I hope their policy of treating the customer well continues. 

Quotes about bureaucracy

As most of you know, I am preoccupied these days with bureaucracy and its fallout, especially in the workplace where it threatens to strangle the very efficiency it proclaims as its sworn goal (efficiency and productivity, which shall be dissected and measured down to their minutest details). 

Bureaucracy is defined as (definition from Merriam Webster online dictionary):

1) a body of nonelective government officials; an administrative policy-making group

2) government characterized by specialization of functions, adherence to fixed rules, and a hierarchy of authority

3) a system of administration marked by officialism, red tape, and proliferation

So I thought I would post some interesting quotes about bureaucracy as today's post. Interesting to consider that some of them were written many years ago. For example, the first quote from The Screwtape Letters, is from 1942. That tells you that these 'systems' have been around for a while. Some bureaucracy is of course necessary to get things basically organized. But at present, it seems that it exists for itself and itself alone--to make itself bigger, better and irreplaceable. We must need it, for without it we are nothing. And I have real problems with this way of thinking. 

--------------------------------------------------

“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."

― C.S. Lewis, from the Preface of The Screwtape Letters

“Remove the document—and you remove the man.”

― Mikhail Bulgakov

“I sighed. I hated the maze of bureaucracy with a passion, but I've found the best way to deal with it is to smile and act stupid. That way, no one gets confused.”

― Kim Harrison, Dead Witch Walking

 “Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?”

― Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune

 “In our time... a man whose enemies are faceless bureaucrats almost never wins. It is our equivalent to the anger of the gods in ancient times. But those gods you must understand were far more imaginative than our tiny bureaucrats. They spoke from mountaintops not from tiny airless offices. They rode clouds. They were possessed of passion. They had voices and names. Six thousand years of civilization have brought us to this.”

― Chaim Potok, Davita's Harp

 “Bureaucracies force us to practice nonsense. And if you rehearse nonsense, you may one day find yourself the victim of it.”

― Laurence Gonzales, Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things

“If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.”

― Hyman G. Rickover

 “The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.”

― Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

 “Some third person decides your fate: this is the whole essence of bureaucracy.”

― Kollontai Alexandra, La Oposición Obrera

“In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.[Pournelle's law of Bureaucracy]”

― Jerry Pournelle

Street art in Oslo

Street art in Oslo is more prevalent now, and some of it is really eye-catching.  I don’t know who the artists are, but I hope you enjoy their work. Feel free to comment if you know who the artists are. I'm only the photographer, but I like what I see.

Random thoughts on writing, street art and 'Living in the Material World'

A very busy week at work, which did not leave me much time for writing of any sort. I have mixed feelings about these kinds of weeks. On the one hand, it’s good to be busy at work. On the other hand, time passes and each day that ticks by is one less day to write and to pursue those small personal dreams. I guess others have the same problem—being torn between personal dreams that have less to do with career ambitions and more to do with personal fulfillment, and workplace ambitions and goals that are held up as meaningful by the workplace. I am always trying to find time to write. It has become my soul’s desire, nothing more, nothing less.

Tired in the evenings, so that doesn’t always bode well for writing, either for its quality or its quantity. In other words, I don’t get many words on a page before my eyes start to close and I feel sleepy. Twenty-five years ago, I could pack another life into my evenings, and I did. I worked sixty to seventy hour weeks then, and sometimes on the weekends. Sometimes I took courses at night—accounting, Italian, business courses, or sometimes I attended evening seminars having to do with investing. It’s been a while since I’ve taken a course. I’m more into learning how to do things myself these days, and less interested in traditional ways of learning. I suppose that has to do with how the brain changes and learns as one grows older. I like that aspect of growing older. Everything feels more fluid and less rigid. There is not one right way to do things anymore, like we were ‘taught’ when we were young.

Inspiration comes from films—I watched ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’,  a documentary film from 2010 about street art as viewed through the eyes of Thierry Guetta, a would-be filmmaker, who followed street artists around the world for years as they pursued their art. One of those artists was Banksy, who ended up using Guetta’s video footage to make this film, because the film that Guetta first made was (presumably) a chaotic mess. Hard to know for sure how tongue-in-cheek this movie really is—is it a hoax film or is it for real? Thierry Guetta followed these street artists and ended up besting them at their own game—setting up a big ‘street art’ show happening in Los Angeles as MBW (Mr. Brainwash) and making millions. By the end of the film, Madonna has hired him to do the artwork for her latest album cover. The question then becomes, who was the brainwasher and who was being brainwashed? Are we being hoodwinked, or is this film for real? The film is well-worth watching, as it is a good introduction to the lives of currently-popular street artists from around the world.

Apropos Madonna (“…You know that we are living in a material world, And I am a material girl”), another good documentary film I watched this past week was from 2011—‘George Harrison: Living in the Material World’ (director Martin Scorsese). Scorsese did a great job with this film; we get a real introduction to the spiritual Beatle, and to his spiritual journey as well as to his progression and evolution as an artist. We also get a real sense of the conflict that pervaded most of his life—how to remain spiritual in a material world. Harrison was truly an amazing artist—creative, spiritual, persistent, focused, dedicated. All of this came through in the film. Mostly when you think of the Beatles, you think of Paul McCartney and John Lennon. This film shows you why George Harrison was an artistic force to be reckoned with. He was way ahead of his time in terms of collaborating musically with ‘foreign’ artists—Ravi Shankar and other Indian musicians--as well as organizing the first charity concert for Bangladesh in 1971. But mostly, I was impressed with his spiritual journey. Here was a man who thought it was important to prepare for death, for the time when he would leave his body for another world. He never denigrated or poked fun at the world of the spirit. And he was a pretty good example of practicing what he preached, with the possible exception of the few periods in his life when he dishonored his body through excessive drug use. I like films about artists of all kinds; I like watching the creative process at work—how artists think, act, work, live in a family, relax—all those things.

Autumn comes to Oslo

It takes two to tango

Sat down to breakfast this morning, and was flipping through the newspaper sections rather randomly. My husband was reading the front section of Aftenposten, so I settled on the Jobs section, where there are not only employment ads, but often articles about new trends in the workplace as well as advice from headhunters and work-life coaches. Wouldn’t you know, there was a photo of two couples dancing the tango in connection with a leadership course they’re taking. This particular course encourages its participants (leader personnel from the company Siemens Healthcare) to learn to dance the tango as part of learning how to team-build and be a better leader. In this particular case, since there were no women attending the course (which is telling in and of itself—not many female leaders out there, apparently), males were dancing with other males, and the photographer snapped a photo of two of these couples. There was talk about ‘stepping outside of your comfort zone’ and all that. I’m sure it’s a lot of fun and hard work to learn the tango, and I would be stepping out of my comfort zone as well to learn the tango and any kind of ballroom dancing. But I would do this in my free time, not during work time, so it wouldn’t matter that I was a slow learner. I’m not sure how learning the tango has anything to do with learning how to be a better leader. Does it have to do with learning to lead and have others follow, or vice versa? What happens if you are trying to follow the lead of someone who never learns the dance, as is often the case in the workplace? What happens if none of the trendy leadership courses results in better leadership? I don’t get it, so someone has to please explain to me why companies are spending money on such courses at a time when the global economy is in a downturn. These courses cost money, a lot of money.

I have yet to see the solid research/statistics that demonstrate the absolute benefit of leadership courses for leaders. How do you measure the effectiveness of these courses; how can you assess the results? Can you be sure that the methods work? I’m a scientist, so I want to see the research data. Please show me the reports so I can read them. I have no problems with an annual daylong seminar where leaders can meet together in their workplace and share common problems, brainstorm, or otherwise come up with new and creative ideas about how to lead. I just don’t understand the emphasis these days (the new trend) on traveling to out-of-the-way hotels and resorts for this purpose, for two or more days at a time. The idea I presume is that you cannot just ‘go home’ at the end of the course day; you’re stuck together with other leaders during the evenings where social skills play a large role as well. Networking and more networking. I know several leaders who shun these trips (or want to) as often as they can. A decade ago, private companies spent money on sending their employees out into the forests and mountains to learn how to work together as a team to survive and maneuver through the inevitable problems that cropped up. These team building courses seem to have paved the way for the new types of leadership and team-building courses. Is this because the old ones didn’t work, or are the new approaches the ideas that sprang up during the old team building and leadership courses? Did someone ten years ago think—it would be cool to have leaders learn to dance the tango together? Is that how it works at the top?

As children, we learned the Golden Rule—‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. In other words, treat people as you would like to be treated. I learned this rule early on and it stuck. And when I have broken it, my conscience tells me that I have wronged someone and to go and make amends. I live this way in my personal life and I have behaved accordingly in my work life. I can honestly say that I have tried to the best of my ability to treat those who have worked for me with respect and honesty, and have been as professional as possible when dealing with them. The awareness of your behavior and how it affects others in the workplace are the two most important things one must learn as a manager, and if you manage this you can be an effective manager or leader. I don’t think it is more complicated than that. Unfortunately, when you are lied to, exploited or pushed aside by company leaders, it makes it that much more difficult to treat leadership with respect. It takes two to tango. You cannot expect respect from employees if you do not treat them with respect. It’s that simple, and that complicated. We say that about children and adults as well; you cannot expect children to respect adults who abuse them or treat them badly or indifferently. It doesn’t matter if the adults are parents, teachers or other authority figures. I could already differentiate very clearly when I was in grammar school, who were the good teachers and who were the abusers. You remember both and you learn from both. Had I been surrounded only by abusive teachers, I would have learned how to evade them to the best of my ability--how to lie to them and how to be dishonest—how to play the game to see who would eventually win control. They would not have deserved better treatment. The same is true for abusive or exploitive company leadership.

My view of workplace leadership is more along the lines of the top-down approach. If you want respect from employees, start at the top and look down. Take a really good look at yourself, and then your employees. Companies should hire leaders who know what the Golden Rule is, who have ethics and morals, who abhor corruption and political game-playing, and who are not just interested in their cushy titles and salaries. They should hire leaders who understand that the buck stops with them. But companies have to value these types of leaders. This is the type of leadership that employees will respect. This is the type of leadership that employees will listen to, when new ideas, change, and challenges confront them in a world of global uncertainty and instability. Employees will look to leadership for guidance, but they will also pitch in and do their fair share and more if they know it will help the company survive. I have yet to meet one employee who was treated fairly by his or her company, who didn’t want to give back his or her fair share to that company. In other words, those employees who have been kicked around, exploited, lied to or treated poorly, and there are a number of them, are those who do not want to give back their fair share to their companies anymore. They have felt the injustice that pervades the system; they know that they are dancing alone. Where they once followed another’s lead, they now dance in place. Their leaders bailed out on them a long time ago. I would say that’s the biggest problem in workplaces these days; employees have to figure out everything on their own. There is no one to look up to, no one to mentor them, no one to take responsibility for them and their professional wellbeing. There are few good leaders who take their employees into consideration, who prioritize them. I know of one leader who was told that she was too concerned about her employees; that as a leader, she should be concerned with the company views and policies and with getting her employees to ‘accept’ a new policy that amounted to nothing more than a new way to exploit their competence and dedication (getting them to work twice as hard for the same amount of money). Suffice it to say that this company has a lot of problems and that the turnover rate for employees is high. Employees can ‘see through’ a lot of the new trends in the workplace, and leadership courses are one of those trends. Bad leaders will not become good leaders by learning to dance the tango; they will become good leaders by practicing the Golden Rule. I have yet to see a course that focuses on the ethics of leadership. I have to wonder if it would be well-attended.

Autumn comes to Norway

Autumn has arrived, and with it comes some stormy days, with menacing clouds and rain. But sometimes rainbows follow after the storms, and if we're lucky, we get to see double rainbows.

This past weekend, we drove about thirty miles north of Oslo to see the autumn foliage. In many places, the leaves were just starting to turn, in other places, they were well on their way. Not so many bright red colors this year--more oranges and yellows. At least right now. It has been a lovely autumn so far--mild temperatures, mostly sunny days and clear nights.

Why I love the story of Jane Eyre

One of the best things I did last weekend was to watch the most recent film adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre from 2011 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1229822/) with Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre and Michael Fassbender as Mr. Rochester. I was completely emotional by the end of the film; I know how the story ends so there were no plot surprises, but the quality and intensity of the acting by Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender were just that overwhelming. Michael Fassbender was a wonderful surprise as Mr. Rochester; I have seen him in Prometheus and Fish Tank previously, and he is Mr. Rochester, David and Conor respectively, all completely different people, a testament to his acting abilities. He managed to impart a real humanity to Mr. Rochester, a humanity that I have not felt as strongly in other Mr. Rochesters. You feel sorry for him and for his predicament, even though you understand that he will suffer for his willfully deceiving Jane about his being married to a mad woman whom he is unable to divorce. By the time he tells her the truth, on her wedding day; you are hoping that Jane will forgive him because you know he is truly sorry for lying to her. But being the moral, proud and wise young woman that she is, she tells him that she will not live with him without being married and she leaves him and Thornfield Hall behind. As fate would have it, a tragedy occurs that ensures that she will finally be able to marry Mr. Rochester, but it was not the tragedy that made her return to Thornfield. It was her recognition of her own humanity and need for love; she gained the insight (inner sight) she needed to understand that she had found real love with Mr. Rochester and that she could not live in a passionless marriage with St John Rivers. She had to marry a man she loved. Her return to Mr. Rochester was actually an acknowledgment that she would live with him regardless of his marital situation as he had initially proposed once she found out he was already married. As it turns out; during her separation from Mr. Rochester, his wife burned down Thornfield Hall and committed suicide thereafter, but Jane is unaware of this when she returns to Thornfield. Mr. Rochester has lost his eyesight due to the fire and must depend upon those around him for help. When Jane returns to him, you understand that he has gained the ability to be grateful, and is no longer the proud and desperate man he once was. No matter how many times I’ve read the book or seen the different Jane Eyre films and TV series through the years, I am always moved by this story—it’s impossible not to love it. 

Fundraising time at Adventure Center

Dear Blog Readers,

I have written about Adventure Center before in my blog (http://paulamdeangelis.blogspot.no/2010/08/journeys-of-wonder-at-adventure-center.html). 

Adventure Center is deeply engaged in fundraising now. Today I am posting a letter written by Elizabeth Mayer, LCSW, President and Executive Director, talking about the mission of Adventure Center and the success of its after-school Arts, Education & Adventures in Nature Programs, and how much the children enjoy and are helped by them.  I hope you will support them in their efforts. No donation is too small. 

Elizabeth writes: 

---------------- 

Common to many of the students who walk through our doors at Adventure Center, Robert has been struggling with issues of injury and pain.  Robert began classes here in 2008.  His lack of belief in himself was palpable. He had given up on school.  His school had almost given up on him, describing him as bright but inattentive, lazy, and defiant. 

Four years have passed and Robert has been immersed in Adventure Center’s after-school Arts, Education & Adventures in Nature Programs.  Now Robert speaks with enthusiasm and wonder.  Robert is now able to express his bright, curious mind, and engaging personality, and with that he is even serving in leadership roles at Adventure Center. Over the last year, Robert has said, “I used to feel mad at everyone. I couldn’t express myself and no one understood me.  Hey; that’s not true anymore!”

Robert is one child of many that have been helped by Adventure Center. The center is affiliated with organizations like Lincoln Center Institute, Community Works, Symphony Space, the Bronx Historical Society, and others (as well as the educators and therapists who provide a learning and supportive environment).  Adventure Center is appreciated as an oasis of innovation and creativity by all who pass through. We invite you to join our mission as we celebrate four successful years as a nonprofit Educational Center in Riverdale, New York.  As we approach this milestone we are stretching our scope and reach to answer the growing demand of children, families, and other organizations

This elevated level of activity brings Adventure Center to a new juncture in its’ journey; it will need to create the means to hire part-time and salaried staff to manage the daily life of the organization, to support the artists, educators, and group leader as we maintain a good ratio of adult/child in each program/class.  As we engage in the first steps of this transition—fully volunteer to partially volunteer/partially salaried organization— we will ensure that we continue a mission of high quality programming in a nurturing setting for all of our children.  The support of friends like you will afford Adventure Center the ability to remain self sustaining and to continue to thrive. 

Please help us reach our goal of raising $50,000. Any amount will help us meet our ambitious goal and continue to help us meet our mission. Your tax deductible gift of $50, $100, $500 or more—will immediately be put to use as we add part time staff—persons who will directly enhance  the learning and growth of our children.

There are several levels to this giving opportunity—we appreciate consideration of your support.  These costs add up, yet these are some examples of the large impact your gift can make on children like Larry and others at Adventure Center.

Ø  $100 can provide the means to add an additional group leader for 1 session of the group’s 10-weeks

Ø  $100 will purchase materials for 1 child for 1 ten-week session

Ø  $250 for 3-ten week sessions

Ø  $500 will purchase materials for 1 child for six-months           

Ø  $750 for seven months      

Ø   $900 will purchase materials for 1 child for a year.

You may donate by check or online by clicking the donate now button on the home page of our  website: http://www.adventurecenterjourneysofwonder.org/index.html

Adventure Center serves students with limited financial means.  Students are motivated and committed to achieving success in school, and in life.  Your gift will have a significant impact on their ability to learn and succeed. 

Thank you for partnering with our students!

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Mayer, LCSW

President and Executive Director, Adventure Center

3736 Henry Hudson Parkway, Suite 207, Bronx, NY 10463

Follow Adventure Center on www.facebook.com/adventurecenterbrx

Thinking about the future, reflecting on the past

Thinking about the future, reflecting on the past, and trying to live in the moment--the unending challenge. I try to make sense of past events, to learn from them, and to use whatever little wisdom I gain to plan for the future. I suppose everyone does this. It’s probably part of getting older, because of course the older we get, the more ‘past’ there is behind us for us to reflect upon. I register that I have changed a lot, just within the past several years. Unsettling workplace events and family experiences impact on how one wants to live in the present and plan for the future. I have finally learned to let go of how I wanted things to be and to accept how they actually are. My work life was one of those things I thought I had a firm grasp on, but it changed shape as I held it and became difficult to hold in one place—like a squirming child. The work world has changed dramatically and for a while the difficulty was just to hang on to the speeding car as it careened forward. Now the car has either slowed or I have mastered running faster to keep up. I definitely know that I absorb information and adjust to change much faster now than I ever did before. And since that seems to be the goal of modern workplaces—to get employees to adjust to constant change--I guess the change is a positive one. But it is not my full-time job that has produced that change, despite the constant pressure to change; it is my consultant work for the UiO science library and for Liivmedia that have had the greatest effect upon me. If I have ‘broadened my horizons’ and changed my approach, it is because I reached out in a whole new direction when I decided to work for both of them, and found a whole new arena in which to enjoy science. Following the different scientific social media and internet sites, reading, digesting, absorbing and commenting on articles I read in all areas of science has been immensely freeing and exhilarating. I don’t want to just read about what goes on in the field of cancer research anymore; I find reading about astrophysics, the universe, global warming, nutrition, and bee colony collapse disorder just as interesting. I have concluded after much reflection on past decisions that I have no regrets that I pursued a career in science. But I have understood that I don’t have to be just a research scientist to enjoy science or even to work in science. There are many different careers that one can have that utilize a science background—science communication, science journalism, journal editor, patent law, social media, consultant. Even though I will likely end my work life as a research scientist, it heartens me to know that I have contributed successfully as a consultant as well. That’s what I would tell young people these days; don’t limit your options. Keep all doors open. It makes for a more dynamic career and an adventurous future.

Language and identity

After living in Oslo and speaking Norwegian daily for over twenty years, I have finally begun to speak English again. I try to do so as often as possible. Not that I haven’t spoken English at times or when I struggled to find the Norwegian words; I just didn’t use my mother tongue very much during these years. Now I do. Why is this important to me now after so many years? One of the reasons was that I felt I was losing my identity as an American, because English is my mother tongue and when I speak Norwegian, I no longer feel American. I don’t feel Norwegian either when I speak Norwegian; perhaps I just felt neutral, and for many years, that was quite alright. Feeling American, identifying myself as American—I was not conscious of these feelings when I first moved here. In fact, it was fine to think and speak in Norwegian, even desirable, because unless you learn the language of the country you live in, you can never fully participate in its social or work life. I am fluent in Norwegian; I even write poetry in Norwegian. In fact, I like to do that, because I feel like I am another persona when I write in Norwegian, and as a writer, that’s both exhilarating and adventurous. I’ve even written a poem about that aspect—about ‘hiding’ behind the safety of a language that is not your own. But the older I get and the longer I live here, the more I want to use my mother tongue; perhaps so I don’t forget it, but also because I feel that I can state my thoughts and opinions more clearly in English than I can in Norwegian. I felt the opposite to be true a decade ago. What changed? I am not sure. Perhaps the experience of sometimes being ignored or not taken seriously in work and social circles, despite my fluency in Norwegian, changed my mind about how to approach specific experiences. Perhaps I thought, if I cannot make myself clear or ‘known’ in Norwegian, there is no point in using this language as my main language to communicate in this country. I can just as well use English, and at present, I feel it is necessary to do so, to communicate who I am at this point in time. The use of English guarantees that people will listen to you and try to understand you.

I register that people have different reactions to my talking English. My husband speaks English back to me unless he needs to really express himself, and then he goes over to Norwegian. But we have mostly communicated through the years using a blend of Norwegian and English that I call Norglish. I find that most of my Norwegian colleagues, with one exception, will speak to or answer me in Norwegian. Among my friends, it varies. Norwegian friends will speak Norwegian with me; non-Norwegian friends will speak English with me, even though we normally communicate in Norwegian. I find that using English is freeing for me; there are parts of me that have been released. It is as though I am allowed to be myself again. I don’t mean that I have not been myself these past twenty years; just that English puts me in touch with the core part of myself, and as I get older, that core part of myself wants to make itself better known. It’s not just about being or feeling American; it’s mostly about reclaiming me and my identity as a woman in 2012, living abroad, an expat, working in science, with one foot in Europe and one in America. I’m guessing that it is the core part of me that is trying to come to terms with all of these experiences—how to piece them all together--and I’m guessing that it is the core part of me that will be having much more to say as the years move on. I’m happy about that.

Considering the pursuit of an academic career

A new school year is upon us. For some students, it means starting the last year of high school or college, with all of the decisions the last year entails—what will I do after high school, will I go on to college, or if finished with college, what will I do after that, will I go on to graduate school, medical school, law school, or will I try to find a job instead? None of these decisions is trivial; in fact, what you choose to do with your life in your late teens/twenties often determines the type of field you remain in for the rest of your work life. It’s not impossible to move out of that field in an attempt to change career path, and it’s entirely possible to shift to a new type of job within one field. I just want to point out that it’s worth considering what is available to you in terms of careers if you choose to, for example, pursue a doctorate in the natural or life sciences.

I have mentored a number of PhD students through the years, as both primary and secondary advisor; I can tell you that for each year that passes, it becomes harder for me to encourage college graduates to pursue doctoral studies. There are many reasons for this; none of them have to do with money. Stipends for PhD students are in fact quite good now, at least in Scandinavia, ditto for postdocs and scientists, in contrast to the meager salaries for all of these positions some fifteen to twenty years ago. The problems have more to do with why you might want to pursue a PhD, and where you see yourself with that PhD in ten years. It is a topic for serious consideration before you start a PhD program, not during or after you finish. You would think this would be the normal common-sense approach; I can tell you that the opposite is often true. Students start PhD studies without a real understanding of what they’re choosing or what it will lead to. They may have a friend who has started on his or her doctorate; they may see it as a way to ‘postpone’ having to think about what it is they want to do with their lives. The fact remains--it is much harder now to get a postdoctoral position after you finish your PhD than it was fifteen years ago; if you are lucky to get a postdoctoral position, it becomes that much harder to obtain grant funding to become a research scientist, and so on. With each step, the eye of the needle narrows. Academia is elitist; the higher up the ladder you come, the more elitist it gets. There is no guarantee that you will be able to have a research career in academia, if you define that as being an independent principal investigator with a small research group. You will find that the doors close once you finish the doctorate, doors that once were open to you. Where you were once encouraged, you are now discouraged. It can happen very directly, when you are told that you are not good enough to pursue a postdoc, or more commonly, you are simply denied the opportunity to go forward because you will not get funding to go forward. There is a long list of potential postdoc candidates each year that wait to hear if they have gotten funding or not. And then let’s say for argument’s sake that you get postdoctoral funding for some years; after you finish that work, you start the real work—of trying to become an independent principal investigator and scientist, one who has his or her own grant funding for specific projects, technical support, lab space, and other such necessities. You need these things, otherwise you get nowhere. So back to my own consideration at the beginning of this paragraph--how can I encourage college graduates to go down the PhD path when I know that doing so will most likely not lead to career opportunities for them within academia or even outside of academia? Many scientific and biotech companies consider job applicants with PhDs to be overqualified. They would prefer that their salespeople are well-educated, but not necessarily at the doctoral level.

So perhaps it makes sense to just focus on and encourage the very few top students at all academic levels. It would mean fewer PhD students overall, but perhaps that is best for all concerned. In this way, academia can remain elitist—for the very few who have made it through the eye of the needle. However, the focus nowadays in the academic circles I wander through is that ‘the more PhD students, the better’. This of course is from the standpoints of the mentors and group leaders, who eye potential students as means to their ends—more publications and thus more money, more hands for the inevitable and time-consuming lab work, and so on. Research groups with many PhD students are looked favorably upon. Those who manage to accumulate a number of such students are considered successful in academia, because a large group generates grant funding, whereas a small group does not. The trend nowadays is to merge small groups into larger ones; doing so increases the chances of getting funding and getting more students. This is all well and good for the large research group; I’m just not sure it’s in the best interests of the PhD students who are looking at a different sort of future when it comes to the job market. It may just be me, but it seems rather pointless to invest a large amount of time and energy in mentoring students who will not be staying in academia. Most of the PhD students I have had the privilege of knowing finished their degrees and left academia for jobs in industry; they are salespeople, application specialists, clinical research associates, and the like. These jobs are all very good jobs, but they do not necessarily require a PhD. Many of these men and women are glad they took their PhDs in terms of having fulfilled a personal goal; some are not. The latter are those who originally wanted (or thought they did) an academic career, and were tossed around in the system by mentors who did not really care about their professional advancement. Or they experienced the nightmare of being one of many doctoral students in a research group, all of whom required their own research projects, all of whom struggled with their group leader over how their projects were defined and who had the primary responsibility for these projects. These few students were exceptionally bright and talented, and in my estimation, were forced out by group leaders who made it impossible for them to stay, because their intelligence and directness challenged the group leader. Or because the group leader knew that there was nothing to offer them in the way of an actual career. So wouldn’t it have made more sense to have discouraged them at a much earlier time point?

Should you pursue a doctorate and an academic research career? No one can answer that question for you. Think long and hard about what you want out of life. If you choose the academic route, know that you have chosen a career where you will always have homework or the feeling of not having finished your homework, where you will work long hours in the lab or in the office analyzing data and writing articles. Unless you are extremely bright, talented and creative, you will not rise in the system. And even if you are all of these, there is no guarantee that you will rise in the system—due to other factors such as political jockeying, pissing contests, and the like. You’ve got to know and understand, really understand, what it is you are choosing. If you don’t, you can end up like many middle-aged and close-to-retirement academic researchers in the current system who find themselves with little funding and no students. The system changed and they were displaced. The small groups they ran are not interesting anymore. They hang on ‘in quiet desperation’. They are small-fish small-pond scientists who suddenly found themselves in larger ponds, at the mercy of the larger and more predatory fish. That is the current reality of many research academics. There are less stressful ways to make a living.  

Talking about loss and sorrow

This past summer has been a reminder that life is fragile and that sorrow and loss are ever-present parts of life. I have written several posts about loss during the past several years; it strikes me how we can never really quite come to terms with loss and the grief that accompanies it. It can be the loss of a friend or family member due to illness; I know of several people who have ‘lost’ their spouses to Alzheimer’s disease and to the slow descent into oblivion that accompanies it. The healthy spouses live with a sorrow that they silently carry around with them. Sometimes they are able to talk about their loss; mostly they do not. Others deal with illnesses that may rob them/have robbed them of their mobility and physical freedoms. Others deal with separations and divorce, or the loss of treasured friendships. Most times it is death that takes our loved ones from us. We need only listen to the TV news to know that this happens every day due to crime, war, or tragic accidents (as just happened to my husband’s good friend who drowned last week after falling off his boat); or just the inevitable progression toward old age where again, people we love move into old age, forge the paths they are able to forge through that barren wilderness, before they move on into the world where death takes them physically from us. Learning to let go of those we love is probably the most difficult thing we will ever be asked to do in this life. Wondering if we will ever know happiness again, that question haunts us.

There are other losses that are not spoken about very openly, despite the means for communication that are continually available to us. We as a society seem to be at a loss for words when it comes to truly describing how we feel about losing our jobs, our identities, our pride or self-esteem, about how it feels to be displaced or frozen out of the ‘good company’ at work or in school, or simply ignored by our workplaces and schools. We talk about bullying in society and that it should stop, but it doesn’t. People who are bullied and harassed experience a loss of self-esteem and happiness that is difficult for them to deal with and that may affect them for the rest of their lives, and they may grieve silently for those losses. We are told to deal with constant change in our workplaces, and while most of us adapt to the new changes and patterns, it is neither as fast as management wishes nor as successful as they might hope. ‘Something’s lost but something’s gained, in living every day’, as Joni Mitchell sings. That’s true, but sometimes the gains don’t outweigh the losses. I would argue that it depends upon what is lost and what is gained. Nonetheless, we cannot stand still and we must live in the now. So we are forced to deal with loss and change.

Our sorrows are often right under our surfaces, but we are silent about bringing them to light. I was at a summer party recently, and I met a young woman who told me about her father’s quiet sorrow; he was born in another country and came here to live many years ago, probably as a political refugee. He married and had a family, but he never stopped missing his birth country. For her young age, she was deeply reflective, and her love and understanding for her father were clear. Her description of his sadness was something I could understand viscerally. For I too miss my birth country; it is a tangible feeling of sorrow that I carry around with me, and that I have done a good job of keeping under my surface until now. But I cannot do that any longer. At the same party, I met a fellow expat, who told me that he hated America and that he would never go back there to live. I could never say the same. I love my country the way I love a person—we are intertwined. I couldn’t tell you why it is this way; it just is after many years of living away from my birth country. So I could not understand my fellow expat, although I registered his words and opinions. It made me think of my grandparents who left Italy for America in the early 1900s and who never once returned there, as they could not afford to do so. What must it have been like to know that you would never see your father, mother, or siblings again, unless they followed you to America? Loss and sorrow on both sides. How their sorrows must have defined their lives, especially when their lives took a downturn during the Great Depression when my grandfather lost his pharmacy. I know that their sorrows colored their later lives because my father told me a lot about his family life and how his father suffered. Not all immigrants miss their birth countries; I know several people who have moved from Europe to the USA, who have become successful and who would never move back to their birth countries. But I also know immigrants to the USA who miss their birth countries regardless of their successes. It is an individual thing—how we deal with loss and the sorrows that accompany it. But it is good to talk about it sometimes, because you find out that you are not as alone in this life as you may think.  

Soaring above the earth

As a child, one of my recurrent dreams was that I could fly. If I was in any danger (I don’t really remember what I perceived danger to be at seven years of age), I could lift myself off the ground and soar a bit above the people whose hands reached out to grab at my feet, which were always dangling just a few inches above their outstretched hands. I remember how wonderful it felt to fly with so little effort on my part. There was no fear there. I like to think that this dream is a metaphor for my life, or at least for the way I wanted to live it growing up, and have lived it to some extent thus far. I don’t want to be pulled back down to earth, not when I want to soar into the clouds and fly free. Indeed, my dream symbolism book tells me that flying may mean several things: ‘wishful thinking; astral projection; suggestion to rise above a problem’. I often think that is why I have such an affinity for birds; there are people I know who can just summarily ignore them or not even see them. They are not conscious of these wonderful creatures flying about and above us. How can you ignore them, I wonder? I cannot. I watch how they behave, I watch how they land and take off. I watch how they watch what is going on around them as they are going about their business, and I listen to them ‘talk’ to each other. It is no surprise to me, after watching birds soar majestically toward a shining sun, that man wanted to fly, and set about learning how. When you look at how far man has come in that endeavor, I can only say--hats off to scientists, engineers, architects, and dreamers everywhere who helped make that dream come true. I said it yesterday and I’ll say it again here—those who dreamed big and made plane flight a reality for the common man—they are the ones who deserve the Nobel prizes for science and engineering. I watched a documentary program about the Concorde supersonic planes recently, and despite the tragic end to the Concorde airline, they were beautiful planes—far ahead of their time. It was moving to see how the Concorde pilots became emotional when talking about their planes. I could almost understand how they felt, even though I have never piloted a plane. But after listening to them, and after watching the incredible air show here in Oslo yesterday (to commemorate 100 years of military flight in Norway), I could almost say that I wished I had learned to pilot a plane. Even though I know that I would probably be satisfied if I could sit in the cockpit of a large plane one day and watch pilots at work. I would love to see what they see and to really understand how planes take off and land.

I’ve never seen an air show before in my life; after yesterday’s spectacular exhibition over the Oslo harbor area, I wouldn’t mind seeing more of them. Watching F16s and Alpha-jets roar through the sky, diving, turning, flying upside down, accelerating, dropping, flying completely perpendicular to the earth, flying in synchrony—it’s an incredible feeling to observe them, like watching birds flying in formation. The Patrouille de France aerobatics demonstration team performed at yesterday's airshow, and here is a link to a video (not mine) on YouTube that will give you an idea of how beautifully they flew. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FES33CtGgiQ&feature=colike

The air show also featured demonstrations of two Norwegian helicopters--the Sea King that is used in search and rescue operations, and the Bell helicopter, both impressive to watch. The amusing thing was that the seagulls, geese and ducks were flying very low to the water yesterday, probably because they were wondering what sort of huge birds had taken over the skies above them where they normally like to be. I like to think too that maybe they were trying to impress us with their grace and flying abilities, since they had such big metal birds to compete with. I noticed them. And nothing will ever beat a bird for grace and beauty in flying. But the air show planes come close.