I was invited to do a post doc in India. While here, I have allienated my professor that invited me because of the "personal issues". Now, the phrase "personal issues" is the one SHE used, not me; I simply barrowed it from her. This brings me to the question of the thread: when something is referred to as "personal issue" is it somethng none of other people's concern, or is it something they should JUDGE you for? I always assumed the term means the former. But, apparently, at laest for that professor it is the latter.
Don't you see it is ridiculous? If SHE calls something a "personal issue", why does she hold it against me? I thought the phrase "personal issue" means it is none of her business to begin with. Now, if she was calling it personal issue because she was just "being polite", then I can understand. But the thing is that she made it very clear she was judging me for it IN THE SAME EXACT SENTENCE where she used that phrase to begin with. Here is a relevent quote from the email she sent me:
Female professor wrote:
It is not clear that these discussions are helpful to you. You seem to think highly of these ideas and it is not my task to dissuade you. You seem very sure of yourself and your counter to criticisms is not in my opinion carefully thought out or sufficiently self-reflecting. You still seem to think that the issues about the paper are with "basics" though I strongly disagree. It is not correct to be vague about definitions. In the course of conversation, you seem to use several contradicting definitions at the same time and yet are completely convinced that you are correct.
It is true that you have other personal issues, but it is not possible for me or others to deal with them. If you think you cannot judge these things independently then you should make sure that you have personal support with you. It cannot be demanded of your work colleagues.
Re. the evaluation. Just as in your hiring we depended entirely on Luca's letter, so here it will be based on the group assessment. This is the
practice everywhere with postdocs.
Now, what I want to draw your attention to are the two things that I have underlined.
1) She referred to something as Personal issue
2) She said that the above-mentioned PERSONAL ISSUES are impossible to deal with. Thus CONTRADICTING the term "personal issue". If it is personal, no one should be upset about it, let alone being worked up to the poitn that it is "impossible to deal with them".
3) She used the word OTHER when she said "other personal issues". In other words, the issues described in the previous paragraph are ALSO personal issues. Now, what did she talk about in the previous paragraph? She talked about my ACADEMIC work. From my poitn of view, that is NOT personal (and YES, it IS a fair game to judge me by publications). So why does she call it personal? Because she does not have a concept of what the word "personal" means. She, mistakenly, thinks that "personal" is something that other people should hate me for. That explains why she refers to my academic thing as a "personal issue".
4) She mentioned that it is not possible for "herself OR OTHER PEOPLE" to deal with them. Why did she mention other people? First of all, if other people have a problem, why can't they speak for themselves? Secondly, how does she KNOW what "other people" have problem with, to begin with? I think this reveals the fact that she has no personal boundaries. THAT is why she projects HER feelings to others (after all, other people and herself are part of the same "system") and that is ALSO why she cares as to what other people think. I believe that this lack of personal boundaries is ALSO a reason as to why she thinks that other people's "personal issues" is something she has to be concerned about.
Anyway, let me list you a few things that happened when I come to India to show you what I did that turned her off. Quite frankly, I agree I was quite stupid, but, like SHE says, these are PERSONAL ISSUES and it is unfair I had been judged for those. While she refused to talk to me about what these "personal issues" were, she told the professor in America who used to be my thesis advisor about them, and he passed information to me. Here is a brief list of what happened:
a) I messed up my VISA and it took two months to get it straight, so I arrived two months after the time they expected me
b) On my way to India I missed my plane connection twice
c) When I got there, they were going to give me a blood test, but I was scared that Indian needles might be infected with HIV, so it took approximately two weeks to perswade me to have one
d) I was not used to the way the businesses are ran in India. For example, the banks are closing at 2 PM or 3 PM (as opposed to America where they close at 5 PM or later), and also that I needed "pass book" (which I originally confused with "passport") in order to use the banks. So, whenever I was confused about something I was saying "in America it is done in such and such way". THis came across as if I was saying America is wonderful and India is horrible and some people got offended by that. But
this was not my intention. On my end, it was the same thing as saying "in general relativity it is such and such; on the other hand, in quantum mechanics it is such and such", and this phrase doesn't insult either theory. But, I guess because I was stressed out my tone of voice probably was loud and it came across like I was angry at Indians
e) Somehow my professor learned that I have used the word "n****r" back when I was in USA, and she was concerned that I would not fit into Indian culture because most people are colored.
e) In India it was hot, so I was sweating easilly and it smelled
f) I was scared that the letter of admission had a clausure "either side can end contract at any time without assigning any reasons". So I needed repeated reassurance that I won't get "expelled". After I was reassured few times, but kept asking anyway, Surya said "if you don't trust me it is not going to work". Then I asked her whether or not by the phrase "it is
not going to work" she was just saying she won't talk to me or whether she was "threatening" that she would "expell" me. She got really upset that I used the word "threaten". Now, it was not my intention to insult her; what I meant was to simply ask whether MY doing X, Y or Z would get ME into trouble; I was NOT trying to accuse others of "threatening" me. BUt I didn't pay attention to the wording so it ended up comming across as insulting without my meaning to
g) There were other interaction with the professor where my tone scared her without my intentions. For example, at one point I was trying to explain to her one of the concepts of my work, and I used the word "you" to mean abstract observer, but she thought that I was about to make a negative personal comment about her. There was also another occasion when I forgot to erase a black board and was explaining something in a small corner, which she didn't like. Finally, I made few visits to director and other officials asking them about my interaction with her, and she understood it as my "making allegations".
h) I got involved with the scammer, and it kept going on for the whole year. Overall, I lost more than $6000 in a scam. The Institute knew about it in October, but I asked them not to do anything about it because the scammer threatened to sue me if they will. Meanwhile I kept sending more money to scammer despite my telling the people at the Institute that I won't. Then, in the Spring, when situation got worse, I started to come to director every day asking what to do, and I kept comming to him for a month or two, asking about the same thing.
15 Feb 2011, 6:48 am
