Dredging up the French, part 2 (turbo mode!)

Allons enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrive!

I talked about how my French is coming back to me a year ago, but since then, it's been on the accelerated path.  On the one hand, I've got a province where French isn't REALLY spoken a lot, but you can definitely find it.  On the second hand, I've got the boyfriend who was in Ontario French immersion school (and his father and sister will banter back and forth with him on occasion).  And on the third hand, and likely the most prevalent in my everyday life, we've got our new Quebecois postdoc and new Iranian postdoc, who both speak French.  They speak French to each other and to anyone else who admits they know a bit of French and would be willing to speak it occasionally.  The Ontario-native grad students and I are included.  It's super cool.

That's three hands of French, people.  French is launching a triple-pronged and multi-accented attack at me.  It sounds dumb of me to say "I know it's an official language and all, but I didn't know it would be so prominent," but that's kind of how I felt moving to Ontario, land of English-speakers.

I find myself falling into the trap that I always do with all of the (bits and shreds of) foreign languages I know.  People talk to me in the foreign language.  I understand, but knee-jerk answer in English.  My comprehension is solid and immediate, but so desiring am I to convey information back quickly, that I answer in the most expedient way possible.  I have to convince the postdocs to stop letting me do this.

Has anyone else moved to Ontario and noticed an unusual influx of French into their life?

Do you use the title?

I don't use my title of "Doctor" often, especially not outside an academic atmosphere.  My email signature says "Kristin B. ____, Ph.D." but more often than not, I erase it before I send an email because it's to people with whom I am familiar.  This title is also on my CV.  Nowhere in print (I believe) does anything say "Dr. Kristin ______" or, even (I feel) worse and incredibly redundant, "Dr. Kristin _____, Ph.D."  I have a great aversion to that last one.

Many people, when I express this aversion, give me the line of, "Why not use it?  You worked hard for it."  Sure, I worked hard for it, but I see no need to bring it to people's attention, especially if what I am doing (e.g. grocery shopping, volunteering, etc.) has nothing to do with my degree.  To use it outside of a professional setting comes with overtones of pretension that I would rather not display.  That's why I made the conscious decision not to have my Canadian checks and address labels say "Dr."  I think a lot of this is based on my mother's treatment of the subject; people call her by her first name, and I have never heard anyone address her as Dr. unless it was the University of Michigan asking for donations.

If people ask me what I'm doing here in Canada, I don't hide it.  Usually I just say I "finished my degree in Pennsylvania" and am working at the university, and then if they press further, I'll tell them it was a doctorate.  This leads to a funny side-note: my youthfulness apparently knows no bounds, because most people don't think I look old enough to hold a doctorate.  They typically guess my age as 24-25 and have gone as low as "under 20" and as high as 27; at the time, 27 was correct.

The grad student in me wants to get 1) perks, and 2) something, anything, for free.  In many cases, I feel like revealing my doctoral status would give me some clout, but there is never a good way to bring it up without sounding like I think I'm better than everyone else.  Once again, if people ask, I'll tell them (this is how I got approved for a Canadian credit card immediately despite having zero Canadian credit), but it seldom comes up, and if it comes up, people expect someone with the title of "Doctor" to be an M.D..... and I am certainly not that.  I can only imagine how it would go on a plane:

"Doctor?  Yeah, I'm a doctor.  That'll bump me up to first-class, right?  Oh and by the way, if someone has a heart attack, I can't help, except to say they should've taken their 80 mg baby aspirin.  kthx."

Calling all Ph.D.s!  How do you introduce yourselves?  Do you use the title in speaking or writing or anywhere but your CV?  Did you use it and then find the effect wore off?  I'd like to hear your opinions.

Accepting complements in science

Taking compliments to heart is something I need to learn to do.  People wouldn't go out of their way to tell you they felt a certain way if they didn't really feel that way, right? (Unless there's some deviousness afoot)

Case in point:  I gave a talk about the wonders of the nanoworld to a crowd of around 100 at Nerd Nite Toronto on Thursday night.  The talk went just as I wanted it to go, my ad-lib was ON, people laughed at my jokes, and I got lots of compliments afterwards. 

Me right before giving THE TALK.

I know it went well, but the one thing I can't help but dwell upon is the one question I couldn't answer.  This question was regarding alpha particle emission from gold nanoparticles/clusters.  We don't talk about nanoparticles in terms of nuclear reactions, and I embarrassingly didn't even remember that an alpha particle is basically a helium nucleus, so I froze a bit and really had no answer.  Upon talking to the asker later, I found out he was interested because of his job, but that still didn't make the question easier to answer.

I guess it keeps me human in science, though.  If you're just praised all the time and not faced with adversity, you're never going to grow.  The opposite is true as well.  I could give a talk on metal nanoparticles drunk and blind, but it could always be better.  Compliments tell me I'm on the right track, and roadblocks spur me to improve.

The Muslim community in Canada

The title there is a bit glib; what I am trying to get at is how Muslims as a whole are perceived in Canada.

I live in a very Muslim part of town.  There is a mosque right next to my building.  I am clearly an outsider in this community, yet no one has been anything but polite and cordial, or at the very least neutral, towards me.  I have felt slightly self-conscious about doing things like bringing home a case of beer to stock the fridge (and there's no hiding that), but no one has paid it any mind.  The women smile at me; we do our laundry alongside each other.  The children sled down the nearby hill when it snows and shriek and act like children do.  The men hold the door open for me, and I for them.  I even shared an elevator ride up with an imam tonight.

I think of myself as tolerant of other cultures and willing to try new things.  I wholeheartedly believe that a smile is universal in any language.  But I am clearly still at heart quite American.  I remember 9/11 very clearly, and I remember crying that day and in the days after.  My country has many, many problems, but it is still my country, and it was attacked.  A part of me, so ensconced as I have been in American society for 28 years, slightly flinches when I see overt signs of Muslim culture.  I will be the first to admit that this unconscious reaction I have greatly bothers me.  No one has ever done anything directly to me.  And it is the extreme minimum percentage of the population that desires to hurt my country.  Yet I think that there is an extreme anti-Muslim sentiment that is ingrained in America, despite efforts of some to downplay it.  So pervasive is it that it has even infiltrated the ranks of the most broad-minded and tolerant Americans.

What encouraged this post was the fact that I finally was able to catch I show that I've been wanting to watch called "Little Mosque on the Prairie."  This is a Canadian sitcom focusing on a Muslim community out in the middle of nowhere in Saskatchewan.  There is no laugh track, and the humor is clearly different from an American sitcom, but I was surprised at how delightful the characters were.  The main character, a liberal imam, even has a smart-ass Anglican priest as his close friend.  His wife (in the episode I saw, they were just married!  Aw!) is an Islamic feminist and a doctor, and her Canadian mother converted to Islam to marry her Lebanese father, etc.  The show is just very sweet, showcasing the camaraderie of the community, but also highlighting the hardships (the conservative pundits who aren't happy about the community being there).  When I first saw an ad for it in the subway, all I could think was, "Holy COW..... I am not in Kansas anymore!"  Having seen the show, I could only think that there is no way anyone would ever agree to run it on American television.  It's kind of sad, too; it's a lighthearted look at the everyday life of Muslim families, and it pokes fun at everyone.  Perhaps America is still a bit too sensitive for that yet, though....

My postdoc, day one.

I am buying more and more into the camp of "your attitude is everything."  I have been looking forward to starting this postdoc pretty much ever since October when I made my decision, so I guess it should come as no surprise that my first day was great.  I feel like I really fit and that my knowledge will be put to great use.

Group meeting in particular put me in wonderful spirits.  It was right up my alley, and even the background information given was on papers with which I was intimately familiar.  I am not shy when it comes to piping up and asking questions, and I felt like they were welcome and encouraged.

I would write more, but I feel like exhaustion has hit me like a ton of bricks.  Suffice it to say, I am so glad to be back in the saddle.  I am almost as glad that my stuff FINALLY arrives tomorrow, so no more blogging from a camp chair!

Being taken care of in Canada

First, a funny story.  When crossing the border, I submitted my paperwork to the clerk, who was surprised at the slowness of the computer system.  He disappeared into the back for about 20 minutes, then emerged and told me that the entire immigration system for all of Canada at every border crossing was down, and I could either wait or go on without a work permit.  The work permit being essential, I sat in my car and read a book until an hour later, when the system got back online.  I like to say that it was my work permit that crashed it, though I really am not quite sure of that.  However, I now have leave to work in Canada!

I may have.... underestimated my job here a slight bit.  I always knew that the University of Toronto was a good school, but I figured that since there were less universities in Canada, that wasn't such a big deal.  Based on everyone's reactions when they have asked me what I was doing here in Canada the past 2 days, though, I decided to go take another look at rankings....

What I was finally able to deduce was that the U of T is basically Canada's Harvard, given a run for its money only by McGill, which is pretty far away in Montreal... so essentially, I'm at the best school in Ontario, if not all of Canada.  This is quite an honor and very, very humbling.  My treatment so far has been nothing short of astounding.  The property managers for my building have bent over backwards to help me out, and I bet my degree and employment have had a good bit to do with that.  This place, while not a bad place at all, doesn't give me the impression of being highly inhabited by university-affiliated folk.  Everyone I talk to at all the stores and banks around here has been very welcoming and frankly a bit surprised that I am living where I am.  I like it because it is on the subway.  That's a great touch!

One LOVELY amenity that I had no idea about until I realized that there are no vents in the units is that the heat comes through the floors.  For someone sleeping on the floor in the midst of a Canadian winter, this is very, very welcome.  It's almost too warm for me since I've been living in the State College icebox apartment; I've had to open the windows and even the balcony door periodically!

Now for the obligatory pictures of the new place:

The bedroom with my tangle of blankets and pillows on the floor.

The living room, which now boasts 2 large bookcases.

The kitchen.  Cooked my first meal here last night!