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Race, Religion and Ethnicity
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This is an interview of
a Chinese woman full professor at a research university in California.
What was your position in China before you came to the United States?
I was a graduating senior at Zhejiang university.
Tell me a little bit about how you decided to come to
the United States for graduate school. Did you have any
concerns?
The main influence was one of the teachers. He had an idea of building a
strong math department at Zhejiang university.
Did he expect you to return after getting the doctoral degree here?
Yes, at the time when we just came to the
US. He realized it's not going to happen
after a year or two, since students sent out before me weren't going back. But
some people regularly go back to give lectures during the summer now.
Did you feel any sense of alienation in graduate school?
What did your professors and fellow students do to help?
The Chinese students there were helpful to the new comers. I got rides for
grocery shopping every week for the first year. Also we had five Chinese
students that went to my department at that year, we were
very close to each other.
Did you have difficulty with English, listening to professors,
teaching? I know that today your English is quite good.
How did you help yourself develop your English skills
and how did your department help you?
I had difficulty listening to the professors, so I took notes very
carefully and went through them afterwards. Sometimes I wrote down the wrong
word and had a lot of difficulty figuring out the meaning. I mostly did
tutoring in the Math lab for teaching which is not possible now. In the first
year we had six Chinese female studente share a three bedroom apartment
in the dorm, so I wasn't feeling lonely but was not learning
English. I had a host family, she was very nice and taught me some
English. I also took some English courses which helped a
little. My English really improved after I started lecturing,
and now also by reading to the kids.
What exactly is a host family?
It was a program run by the foreign students office, matching
students with a local
American family who would like to learn more about foreign culture and help
foreign students, usually get together every other month. Some get very
close.
When did you first feel comfortable with your English? Your presentations
are quite good.
Making presentations became easier after I realized that's part of my routine
job, not a big thing. I was very shy and never had a chance to make a
presentation before coming to US. People who come here now usually have very
good English.
Do you have any recommendations to Graduate Programs to help
their Chinese students feel comfortable in the United States?
Have on campus housing available for the first two years.
Have a Math lab option for the first year.
When you searched for jobs you had a two body problem to solve.
Did you also restrict your search to places you felt might be
more welcoming to Chinese people? Places where you could preserve
your culture easily?
When we searched for jobs we didn't make restrictions. Once we had
a choice we did prefer places where one would more welcoming to
Chinese people at a certain level.
How have you preserved your cultural identity through the years?
The kids are in Chinese school once a week for three hours
and we visit China. Chinese books, movies.
You have two children and successful career as a mathematician.
Many Chinese have help from their parents raising their children.
In what ways did your parents and inlaws help you with your children
through the years?
My mom (my dad passed away a long time ago) and inlaws have helped a lot
with my kids. They took turns helping us when my two kids were born by
coming all
the way from China and living with us. My mom stayed two years each time and
inlaws one year each time, the kids didn't start preschool until they were 2
years old. They babysitted the kids every weekday and whenever I came to
office, also helped with cooking and chores. This gave me the flexibility
of coming to the office whenever I needed (I like to work at the office).
I couldn't imagine how I could handle it without their help,
especially when the first one
was small, my husband was working at a different place and was doing weekly
commuting. I am very grateful to my Mom and inlaws' help.
I assume you also help your parents and inlaws as well in many ways.
Can you describe your obligations to them?
We are responsible for supporting my mom and in laws in every way,
including their health expense.
Do you feel your department is understanding when you need to miss
work to care for them when they are ill?
That hasn't happened yet.
Is there anyway your university could be more helpful regarding your
responsibilities towards your mother and inlaws? Do they provide
health insurance? Are there other benefits that might be helpful?
My university can insure one adult dependent which is very helpful to us since
my husband can insure himself.
How do you feel about your career as a mathematician?
I like being a mathematician after tenure.
How do your inlaws and mother feel about your career as a mathematician?
They feel proud that we are college professors.
Your husband has also played a major role in the upbringing
of your children. I've seen you at conferences taking turns
watching the children. Do you feel that the math community
understands the level of responsibility a father has towards
his children in Chinese culture?
In old Chinese culture, the wife should play the supporting role for
her husband's career. We equally support each other and I like that very
much. I feel a supporting husband is very important but I also don't want
him to make sacrifices. I look after the kids more but he is available
whenever he
can be. I still do not feel very comfortable bringing kids to math
conferences.
Would you feel more comfortable bringing them to conferences if daycare
was available?
Yes.
I mentioned earlier the possible alienation you may have felt
for being Chinese. Do you feel that you have ever suffered
discrimination in your teaching evaluations? If so, how did
you address this concern?
They will complain about my English for the rest of my life, but I do have
strong accent.
People have often said things to me like "why don't you invite the
Chinese guy from - University to speak" or "that Chinese speaker
from last year was good." Do you have any recommended responses
to this sort of inability to learn people's names? Is there a way
for Chinese mathematicians to help other mathematicians learn
their names?
To have an American middle name, which I still haven't done.
You have an excellent job and solved a two body problem. How did
you approach your interviews?
Several people helped, to whom we remain very grateful. The fact that the
department here accepts couples also helped. Maybe luck also played a role.
You mentioned that you like your career after tenure. Was there
something particularly stressful about the tenure process that
made you unhappy?
I was stressed in general, even though the departemnt is friendly and several
people very encouraging. At the time I was the only one untenured, moreover I
had a small kid. I didn't know what to expect, didn't feel like I could share
with anyone.
I've heard some appointments committees may assume that Asians cannot teach
well unless it explicitly mentions good teaching in their letters
of recommendations. Can you make any recommendations to other
Chinese mathematicians as to how to convince such committees that they can
teach well?
Provide all the supporting material,
prepare a good lecture for interview.
What can a department do to help keep a Chinese
mathematician in the department?
She could be made to feel welcome by including her in departmental
committees, casual conversation, lunches, invitations to dinner,
and encouraging annual reports.
My department has done all this for me.
posted on December 17, 2003
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On Sexuality
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I'm writing in this forum to contribute my voice as a mathematician,
a gay man, a transman, and as someone who was raised as a female in
the United States. In particular, my goals here are to let
transgendered people know that there other transgendered
people out there and to attempt to destigmatize transsexuality and
transgenderism by bringing it out in the open.
Let me skip my childhood but give some background about my personal life
leading up to graduate school. I went to the North Carolina School of
Science & Math for my junior and senior years of high school. I met some
wonderful friends there but I felt increasingly isolated with being
required to live in the girls' dormitory. I spent a lot of time discussing
this uncomfortable arrangement with the school counselor. There were other
issues during that time but the end result was depression. I left there
March of my senior year and moved in with a boy friend. With the pressure
of school and of trying to conform off of me, some of the depression
lifted. I won't go into too many details about the next few years but it
suffices to say that I continued to spend a lot of mental energy thinking
about society's rules and how I fit into society. After a few years of
regular income and relative stability I started to think about my future.
I knew that I wanted not just a bachelor's degree but a higher degree as
well. I decided I wanted a career that gave me some flexibility over my
daily schedule and a job that allowed me to wear clothing that was
comfortable for me, which for me meant no female dress clothes. Combining
that with my own personal conviction that I was intelligent and capable, I
decided I wanted to become a college professor.
So, I went to college. My first two years I attended a community college.
Then I transferred to a local four-year private college for women,
Meredith College. I liked the small size and the seriousness of the
students. I also thought that perhaps I just needed to develop some close
friendships with women and many of the confusing thoughts I had would go
away. I did well at Meredith but being around so many women only increased
my feelings of being different. I began to think that perhaps I was a
lesbian. After visiting many graduate schools, I chose University of
Kentucky. The department was one of the friendliest I had contacted and
after only a weekend visit I had already learned the location of a local
gay bar. There seemed to be an open and thriving gay culture there which
was important for my plans to "explore my sexuality".
I started graduate school in 1996. In the spring semester I went to a few
meetings of the student GLBT group, but my confusion was still there. I
didn't meet any women I was attracted to, and by talking to the lesbians
at the meetings it seemed I still had not found others with feelings like
mine. My attraction to men, however, was still strong, and I was confused
by this because if I was a lesbian, how could I still be attracted to men?
I realized that feeling masculine is not the same thing as being a
lesbian, but this realization did not explain my feelings. I didn't feel
attracted to straight men, but gay men were not interested in me. Bisexual
men saw me simply as a butch women and I had not met any women who seemed
right for me. Then one day a local transwoman came to speak to the GLBT
group about transgenderism. I was dumb-founded. Here was a woman sitting
across from me who was saying many of the things I had always felt but
that no one else had ever seemed to understand. I realized my feelings
were not about sexual orientation but gender identification.
I learned there was a small conference about transgenderism taking place
within driving distance. I went and instantly felt like I had found people
who could finally understand me. The feelings inside of me suddenly were
starting to make sense and I finally had a name for them. The realization
that my feelings had a name was somewhat a dual-edge sword. On one hand, I
felt elated that I had finally found "my people". On the other hand, I was
overwhelmed with the idea of the changes that seemed necessary. I was
unable to stop my fall into another depression.
At this point, I had passed the preliminary exams, passed the
language exam, and chosen an advisor. With these intense exams
and coursework completed, I had fewer ways to suppress my
explorations of my emotions through studying. Then my advisor wanted
me to wait another year before taking the qualifying exam. So, I felt
adrift in my studies and I could sense that my ability for deep
thought was not functioning properly. I started to withdraw from
friends and family, sometimes had panic attacks on campus, and upset
my office mates with fits of anger. My advisor was supporting me with a
research assistantship so I was blessed with not having to teach a
course during this time.
I began to see a therapist. I initially presented to the therapist
complaining about anger, depression, and told her that I thought perhaps
I had a body image problem. After a few sessions the words
"transgendered" and "transsexual" began to formally surface.
Explaining that she felt unqualified to help me further, she
suggested another therapist. At this point, there was a glitch, so
to speak, in the progression of things. My advisor had arranged for
me to work with a researcher in Idaho so I went away for three
months to live in Idaho, during which time I basically held on
day-to-day with the promise that my new therapist would be able to
help me when I returned. Without that lifeline, I might not have
survived those three months.
When I returned to Kentucky, the new therapist and I worked very
hard. In the meantime I slogged through my qualifying exam. After
about a year I felt confident enough in my decisions and
feelings to tell not only my close friends and my family, but also
my department chair, director of graduate studies, and advisor that I
was going to change my outward gender from female to male.
The chair, DGS, and my advisor were all extremely helpful. I had
been very worried that all the time I had spent in graduate school
would come to a crashing end, but I was happy to learn that they
would be accepting of the situation. In fact, I was told that I was
not the first transsexual mathematician they had known -- a pleasant
surprise for me for I really felt quite alone. (I have no idea who this
other trans* mathematician is, so if you're reading this, I'd enjoy
meeting you.)
After all the hard work with my therapist much of my depression had
lifted and I began to feel my ability to concentrate was returning.
There were some complications, of course. The registrar didn't
want to alter my records to reflect me as male. The DGS made
a few phone calls and helped me out. Also, because of discriminatory
Social Security rules, my SS information and my employment
information now did not match. (This was never resolved and I have
suspect it will cause problems in the future for me as well.)
Being able to finally express my full personality allowed me to be
able to continue my life. My brain and body were more fully
integrated and slowly my ability to think clearly and deeply was
being restored. My advisor stood beside me the entire time and has
always done his best to support me financially in terms of
conferences, fellowships, etc.
If my department had been unable to accept my transition, it would
have effectively ended my pursuit for a PhD in mathematics. This was
one possibility I had explored in therapy but I am very happy that I
was not forced to choose between my personal happiness and my interest
in mathematics. However, there was a period of about two years
when I was absorbed with the personal conflict between my outward and
inward genders which is "lost time" towards my doctoral degree. I wish
that I had been able to resolve these personal issues before starting
a graduate program, but we cannot go back and change time. There are
still transition related issues involving expensive surgeries
and governmental bureaucracies ill-equipped to deal fairly with
trans* people. My immediate career will definitely be affected by
these two items. I expect my future employment to be affected by
health insurance usability concerns, security clearances issues, and
potential confusion about my identity or past. I truly believe that
the decision to be "out" about being a transman will simplify my life.
I have no shame in who I am or my history and I believe that my unique
background of being raised as a female is a benefit.
My department provided support in many ways. Besides what I mentioned
earlier, the DGS assisted by being sure that the department was
appropriately notified about my change and assured me that the
"bathroom issue" would not be an issue for our department. The
chair graciously offered to help me as necessary. My advisor simply
stuck by me which was especially important to me. All departmental
members have made the transition to using male pronouns when speaking
about me and I've never been questioned in the restroom.
I believe the mathematics community can be more supportive by allowing
trans* people a way to distinguish themselves on standard forms. It
was always difficult for me to choose a category for sex or gender.
I think that including a way to indicate that someone identifies as
both male and female, neither male nor female, or another classification
altogether on forms where sex or gender is used for statistics or
classification could help transgendered people become more visible
and feel more accepted.
posted October 2, 2003 (for updates click here)
by Leigh Noble
noble@ms.uky.edu
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Extended Families
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When I first decided to pursue a doctorate in mathematics
it never crossed my mind that I would ever leave New York City.
This was where my parents and three sisters lived and where my
boyfriend's family lived as well. I had lived at home commuting
to college, and so had my older sister, and I thought my younger
sister was fairly adventurous for having gone all the way to nearby
Stony Brook for college. My father was a math professor at CUNY (Staten
Island)
and had completed his doctorate at Courant Institute. I was accepted
to MIT with a fellowship, but chose to take a fellowship at Courant
without even visiting Boston.
I don't regret my decision. My family and friends helped me survive
the qualifying exams and I'm not sure I would have obtained the PhD without
their support.
It was only at the beginning of my final year of graduate school that
I realised how hard it was to get a local job. I was expected to graduate in
May of 1996 and many of the graduates from May 1995 hadn't found an
academic job. I also learned that, unlike my father who had
found a tenure track job at CUNY without a postdoc, it was now
expected that one complete a postdoc or two before taking a tenure
track position at a four year college in the CUNY system.
I was determined to stay near my family and my boyfriend, whom I had been
dating for 7 years at that point. So I got a college guide and found
the addresses of every four year college within a 2 hour distance from New
York City. I applied to all these colleges using form letter applications
and applied to postdocs in nearby cities (Harvard, MIT, U Penn, Yale,
Stony Brook, Rutgers...). I focused a bit more on the postdocs, trying
to establish contacts at Stony Brook and Rutgers. I received a very promising
letter that I had been on the short list for a Benjamen Pierce postdoc
at Harvard as well as an invitation to speak at MIT, but did not get
job offers. I wonder sometimes if it would have been better not to
have mentioned to Stony Brook that I wanted to be near New York City;
despite a very close fit researchwise, I've never been offered
a position there.
Finally, in April, I was given a very promising preliminary telephone
interview at Trenton State College in New Jersey. They seemed sincerely
interested in the fact that I wanted to be near New York City but
they had a very high teaching load. My research career was saved by
Professor Shing Tung Yau, who came to my talk at MIT. He was surprised
when I told him I hadn't had a job offer yet. A week later I was offered
a one year position at Harvard and I took it.
The year I was in Boston I commuted back to New York City every weekend
to see my boyfriend and my family. Monday through Thursday I worked
in the office until 10 pm. I wish I had spent a bit more time on my
research, but I was going through the job search again and this time
applying a little further afield: 3-4 hours from New York City. I
learned more that year from Professor Yau's seminars than I'd learned
in a typical year at graduate school.
Again, after applying to 120 places this time, I only had two interviews.
Luckily both places offered me a job: Wellesley and Johns Hopkins.
Wellesley offered me a tenure track job just outside Boston with a high salary,
paid maternity leaves and excellent students. Hopkins offered me a three
year postdoc in Baltimore with a few colleagues close to my area of research
and also top students. I still wanted to get back to New York City
for a final tenure track position and thought applying from a postdoc
would look better than applying from a tenure track job. I thought it
would be easier to get letters from colleagues on my behalf and easier
to convince a school like CUNY that I was really interested in a position
if I wasn't coming from a top liberal arts college. While I would
have earned 100K more than I have the past 5 years had I taken the
Wellesley position, I don't regret my choice. I do dream occasionally
of those paid maternity leaves :).
My boyfriend came to Baltimore with me and we got married a year later.
We visitted our parents almost every weekend. I spent a year catching
up on research and started the search for a New York City job a year later.
This time I only applied to six jobs since I could remain at Hopkins for
another year. All six were tenure
track positions within an hour of New York City. I personalized
every application, contacted faculty in the departments whose fields were
close to mine, and described my teaching in ways that refered to the exact
courses offered at each school. Out of 6 jobs applied for, I had 2 interviews
and I took the first offer. It was a job at CUNY's Lehman College, a 4
year college in the Bronx with excellent researchers in my own field.
There was an opportunity for promotion to the graduate
faculty (which I have since been awarded) and released time from teaching
offered for grants/research.
Since taking the job at Lehman College, I've been invited to apply for
tenure track positions at two excellent departments but have politely
turned down the invitations. Neither of them have came from anywhere remotely
near New York City. Perhaps when I am older I may be more open to
positions further afield, but as a mother with young children being near
my parents and inlaws is unbeatable. My daughters see all four of their
grandparents at least once a week. Their grandparents have helped me raise
them: caring for them when they were too young for daycare, assisting me
when I was on bedrest during my second pregnancy, cooking dinners and picking
them up after preschool. My children are also close to three of their
greatgrandparents, their cousins and their aunts and uncles.
Since my husband is an only child, we expect that his parents will move in
with us when they
are too old to live on their own. If we stay near New York City, they
won't lose their friends when that time comes.
What could the departments/mathematicians do to support mathematicians
with extended families?
Since having a close extended family has more advantages than disadvantages
there is little support that mathematicians with extended families need
from their own department. However, I do think something can be done to
help mathematicians solve the problem of finding jobs near their families.
I think departments should give serious attention to candidates whose
cover letters mention a sincere desire to be near their location. My
department does this partly because it is easier to keep faculty who
have a desire to live in NYC despite the high cost of living. I think
this is fairly common in departments trying to fill tenure track and
tenured positions that might otherwise have some difficulty retaining
faculty. Faculty who grew up near a university can also provide better
role models for students, especially if the student body is largely
in state.
It is harder to argue why departments should consider such candidates more
seriously for postdoctoral positions. Clearly, it is of top priority to
hire postdocs whose research will match the department. Postdocs whose
fields are far from the fields of other members of the department will
miss the opportunity to expand their knowledge and develop their skills.
However, it would certainly help mathematicians with extended families
build research careers if departments would give them a bit of an edge.
I do believe that postdocs who are near their extended families will have
more help with their children and less difficulty adjusting socially.
Finally, I do wish that top departments would look to nearby
universities and colleges when considering hiring tenured full professors.
They could consider mathematicians who have moved up within one department
since they were young even if their research is not quite as
active as the research of candidates from higher ranked universities.
It is possible that their current positions have high
teaching and service requirements which have not allowed them to fully
develop their research careers. I believe there are quite a number of
women who are of the caliber
to be a member of a top department but have not accepted any offers
from more distant universities possibly because they have extended family
responsibilities related to their children, step children, aging parents
and grandchildren.
Perhaps the simplest thing departments can do for mathematicians with
extended families is to offer paid visiting memberships to local
mathematicians that have been attending their seminars. Such an offer
can often be negotiated into an unpaid leave of absense from their
own institutions. A perusal of the IAS visiting membership list
quickly reveals how many local mathematicians take advantage of these
positions.
posted July 30, 2003
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Loss
and Single Parenting
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The following is an interview of Marianne by Christina Sormani.
1) Please give me a brief description of where in your career you were when
your daughter was born and when you lost support for her upbringing and a
summary of where you are now.
I defended my dissertation in April 93. My daughter was born in July 93.
I got pregnant when I knew I had the results to start writing down my
thesis, my pregnancy was planned. By then I had a few minor papers and one
that contained the first part of my thesis, this was a good paper (the
paper in beroamericana).
In September 93 my partner was diagnosed with metastasized melanoma. He died
in September 94. Between my daughter's birth and his death I was mostly
busy caring for both of them, and didn't do research. I believe though that
the second paper from my thesis was written and submitted during that time,
but I don't remember well (the paper in Nonlinear Analysis), this was
another good one. After he died, I had a very hard time to get back on my
feet. I came back to life and research after a conference in Zakopane
(Poland) in June 95. I believe it was about a year later that I was able to
complete another paper (the one in Proceedings AMS). I spent the years
97-99 on several visiting and postdoc type positions, in Spain, Poland,
Argentina, US, Argentina, France and US. The length of those stays was
between 3 and 10 months each. Wherever I went, I took my daughter with me.
This was a huge effort, my daughter was between 3 and 6 years old, and had
to learn many languages and adjust to new preschools. I believe I made very
good use of that time, I had chosen the places where I stayed longer in
order to learn new techniques, and I am still profiting from that. My work
went slowly, partly because of constantly relocating with a small child,
but also because I was making my first steps in new techniques.
2) What aspect of your career was most affected when you first became a
single mother?
The heaviest thing was that I was two years completely out of research right
after my PhD: one with my daughter and her dad's illness, the other one
recovering from his death. During this time I had my hands full and was
getting very little sleep, and my daughter's father had been all the cheer
in my bones. I had no relatives in town, but that was probably good, I
needed to be left alone to recover. My close friends were basically busy
keeping me going. I had started off being competitive in my career, but
these years ate up all the head start I had. I never thought my partner
could die, I was not prepared for it at all.
Concerning the professional aspect, I will address this question farther
when answering 4).
Another difficult issue resulted from my need to have affordable day care
for my daughter very near my workplace. In order to have such a day care I
had to work full time at the School of Sciences, which was then undergoing
a lot of inner-political conflict. I don't thrive in a conflictive medium,
and I was offered to
work at the Argentinian Institute of Mathematics (which belongs to the
Argentinian Research Council), but then I would have needed a private day
care, and a lot of commuting between home and work. A the Institue,
professional mail and photocopies were payed for us, and there was a
clerical person who would TeX our papers. At the School of Sciences we had
none of this. During my work toward my dissertation I had worked at the
Institute, so I had to wean myself form the "pampered" life mathemticians
had there. I was longing for a quiet place to focus on my work, with easier
commuting logistics, more support, and where I could learn new things.
3) How did your department at the time help/offer to help?
I was given a low teaching load and some time to recover. It was a very
vulnerable time professionally for me, and positions extremely scarce in
Argentina then. I also lost support from one grant, as a consequence of
people pushing to pave the way for their own Ph.D. students, but I was
picked up by another grant. While some people took advantage of my
vulnerability, one senior researcher (Carlos Segovia) literally gave my
research plan a blank check, that is, signed to be responsible as
supervisor while the problem was completely out of the reach of the
techniques he used. He was the one that picked me up with his grant. Being
part of a grant was needed to pay for books to keep working (libraries are
poorest in Argentina), for photocopies and printer paper and ink, and for
travel money to local conferences. In spite of being very busy, he took
time to listen to my struggles with my new math problem, which I managed to
eventually solve. On this paper I worked in 95 and 96.
My parents helped me buy a notebook computer (they were expensive then in
Argentina), so I could work as well from home or in my office.
4) How could they have provided further support?
Well, I think I was in the crossfire of everybody protecting their own
recent PhD students seeking positions as assistant professors. Besides, I
had always been given complete freedom to choose my research problems,
which were in the area between classic free boundary problems and harmonic
analysis. There was the additional challenge to seek harmonic analytic or
potential theoretic results in a context in which the tools then known
wouldn't work (due to nonlinearity). It was a huge gamble. If I needed my
supervisors to bail me out they wouldn't have known how to do it. One of
them wouldn't stop squirming, since how their supervised ones do is one of
the things the research council evaluates them on. It played to my
advantage that in Argentina it is usual to keep working as a TA until you
find a position as an assistant professor, so I kept earning my living. I
should say here that research mathematicians work either for the research
council (CONICET) which has some analogues in the wealthier provinces, or
for some university. You can do both and keep the higher of the two
salaries, but not both salaries. The people I had professional contact with
all worked for both the research council and a university, most of them for
the University of Buenos Aires.
I can say I owe infinite gratitude to Prof. Segovia, and to Prof. Mario
Primicerio, from the University of Florence (he invited me to the meeting
in Zakopane I mentioned in 1). I literally came back to math after those
two years after having been invited to a Free Boundary Problems, Theory and
Applications conference, in Poland. Prof. Primicerio was in the organizing
committee. Without both of them I would never have come back to math. I
don't know if I ever thanked them enough. I knew Prof. Primicerio since
some time ago. In particular, in 91 I spent 3 months working in his group.
He made me give a talk, which I ended with the open problem I was working
on. He had me work on that problem with just the right person in the group,
who was just back from a postdoc under DiBenedetto (Daniele Andreucci). We
managed to solve the problem (against all odds), and it became the paper in
Iberoamericana (my first good paper). My thesis problem resulted from a
blend of my advisor's interest in very degenerate diffusions and Carlos
Kenig's and Bjorn Dahlberg's work on the porous media equation. Carlos
Kenig had visited Argentina and taught a short course on his work on PM
with Bjorn Dahlberg, and I managed to adapt his techniques, combined with
work by Benilan, Crandall, and Pierre, to a much more degenerate situation.
When I show my work I am often asked if I was a student of Kenig's. He
knows my work, including the problems I now work on, and has written
references for me. I owe him a lot too. Actually, it was very good for me
to show the results in my thesis in an international free boundary meeting
Buenos Aires when my daughter was a baby and my partner already ill. People
in my research field who attended that meeting wrote me references later,
when I looked for a job in the US and in Europe.
5) Were there any decisions you made that helped you careerwise?
I don't now how I made my decisions. I steer my life from the gut level, I
have always done that, and then hope to have the nerves to survive it, and
the energy and endurance to work hard enough for a long enough time to make
it work.
I never believed in making choices, and thought that the willingness to work
extremely hard should allow you to have both and not to have to trade in
things you really want. This position has since been thoroughly tested and
I touched the boundaries of what I can handle many times, but I'm still
here and still holding a job... I wouldn't have the nerves to recommend
this approach to others though :)... but neither would I have the heart to
tell anybody to give away half of their life for the sake of the other
half...
I had at some point the option to choose between a visiting posision in the
US, a position in a province university in Portugal, and a fellowship for
habilitation in Germany. While any of the three would have worked, I choose
the US. I consulted this choice with a female mathematician (Cora Sadosky).
I think the choice to come to the US was right, and that was her advice
too. I have the advantage to speak several languages, and am very good at
picking up new ones.
5') How did you deal with childcare?
As I said before, I had a head start with my thesis. So I didn't have much
trouble switching from depending purely on the research council to a full
time TA position at the University. The School of Sciences runs a day care
for the kids of full time personnel. I signed up early, to make sure my
baby-to-come would have a place.
5") Any help from your parents/friends?
My mother watched my daughter when I had to travel abroad for meetings. This
happened several times. In addition, I had 2 cats and one dog to watch, and
was living in a house, not as is more usual in Buenos Aires, in an
apartment.
You see, I always wanted it all... My mother also came during Julio's last
days and took B to day care and back, so I could stay with him.
My friend Andrea Solotar (and algebraist) has always been around, keeping an
eye on me (I was pretty worn out after my daughters' birth, and had very
heavy bleeding when I had my first period after her birth). Lo and behold,
Andrea rode the bus for an hour because I was almost unable to get up from
a chair without getting completely dizzy, and my house was being a mess...
She has also kept little B for two days or so when her dad died. At
this point I have trouble having precise recollections. It was very
intense, and still now I can't reconstruct it all.
My friend Sofia Rosemberg (herself a lawyer and psychotherapist) has
accompanied
my partner and me through his illness, we wouldn't have made it without her.
She does not do the job of accompanying the dying for anybody who needs it,
but has done it several times in the past for friends.
Once Gene Fabes (my advisor's advisor) came to Santa Fe (another town in
Argentina) to teach a mini course. I attended, and a graduate student of
Andrea's let B join her little son who had a babysitter. Another
colleague form Santa Fe housed B and me. I got an invitation for
postdoc with Gene Fabes, but when I was ready to go he had just passed
away.
6) Were any members of the math community encouraging to you?
What could the community have done to help further at that time.
Yes, and I named them above. I think it functioned more on an individual
basis. Also, most of the people who supported me are sort of "mathematical
relatives" (basically "descendants" of Antoni Zygmund and Alberto
Calderon). When I came to the US I met many more of them at conferences,
and was overwhelmed finding that our work still shows the connection, and
by their generosity acknowledging this. I never knew I was a member of a
bigger family :). When I came to the US on a visiting position, I was given
many opportunities to show my work in colloquia and seminars at different
schools. I am grateful to all the people who invited me, and to those that
housed B and me(B went everywhere but to one meeting with me),
so we wouldn't have hotel expenses. When I went to a week-long meeting at
Courant Institute Beth Bradley watched B, and Christina Sormani :)
housed me. Now that B is 10, when I travel while her school is in
session, she mostly stays with my Friend and neighbor Sara Fisher. I have
to say, almost everywhere I went I had nice neighbors, and made friends
with many of them.
Education wise, I owe to Hugo Aimar (who proposed the problem I worked on in
95, the paper in Poceedings AMS that I showed Gene Fabes in Santa Fe when I
had just finished it). I owe a whole lot to Pawel Strzelecki and Piotr
Hajlasz (both former students of Bogdan Bojarski) from the University of
Warsaw. I got motivated to work there after the meeting in Zakopane,
Poland, after which I restarted my research. I spent seven months with
them, on another impossible problem. Somehow they felt that geometric
measure theory was the right way to look at it, and got the right books in
my hands. While we never worked together, I owe to them my current work
tools, just like I owe the earlier ones to Carlos Kenig. I keep working on
that research line. The results from what I started under their guidance
are currently submitted, and further ones exist in the form of preprint and
partially typed and notes. I later spent half a year at Hopkins, with Joel
Spruck. During that time I worked on picking up as much as possible of his
intuition of movement of level surfaces, and the combined use of
differential geometry and PDEs. My current work combines the level set
approach with geometric measure theory.
Going back to your question above about the choices I made, I think that I
chose people to teach me tools that combine well. I choose by my taste, and
again it was a bet, but somehow the correct choice, made by instinct. Since
ever, and still now, I get to hear that I'm biting off more than I can
chew. Now, and then, I can still drop out tomorrow, I don't need to do it
today :), and that way I got some math done. I'm not good at living with
the awareness that I'm going for less because it's safer :). While this way
I work slowly, and get criticism for it, somehow all the mentors I ever had
encouraged me to follow my instinct. My dying partner kept telling me that
it's better to try and fail than to be at the end of your life and know
that you didn't dare trying. I think I gambled hard, and it's not over yet.
I had help. Somehow my taste was good. Somehow I managed to survive, so
far, the path I put myself on.
Currently, I owe a lot to my boyfriend. There is also a number of colleagues
that I feel appreciate me. This cheers me up a lot! Of course we want to
live up to the highest standards, even having a huge work burden being a
single parent...
7) Did you ever consider leaving mathematics at that time?
Then, and still now, a gazillion times. I know many female mathematicians
having young kids do. They told me so. It's one of the darkest hours,
professionally, but also personally.
8) At what point would you say that you recovered your ability to
concentrate on your work to your satisfaction and how did you enable
yourself to restart (if you did in fact have a break in being able to
concentrate)?
It probably was a question of having the energy and cheer, rather then the
ability to concentrate. It happened about two years after my daughter was
born, one year after my partner's death.
How did I enable myself... you will laugh, but I fell in love... and that
literally brought me back to life. Still, I have been completely alone for
almost seven years after my partner died. I'm not good at being alone, and
I hated it. I sometimes have barely been able to survive the stress. In
addition, during those years I spent time in Spain, France, Poland,
Argentina, three different schools in the US, while my daughter was between
3 and 7 years old. My daughter went to preschool, kindergarten, and
elementary school in 4 different languages. She picks up languages fast,
but unfortunately she later forgets them. In all her schools she was a good
student :).
I'm only now somewhat getting a grip on my research again, I hope it is not
too late. Concerning working to my satisfaction, I never got there, I'm
still not there. I feel somewhat more solid now, but that is all. I am very
uncomfortable a certain style frequent in our profession, by which some
people seem to assert their smartness by challenging others.
8') Did being a single mother influence your decision to move to the US?
What did? Has it influenced your choices locationwise since?
Well, it is good that the US has non discrimination policies (in my case
age, since all the things above slowed me down). Also salaries in the US
are better, and being a single mom is quite costly (from hiring people to
do handyman work, to house cleaning and day care). I like to live and work
in a tiniest town, because logistics are lighter, and there are only that
many hours in one day, and that much energy in my bones. Basically, being a
single mom made me look for jobs abroad, when I got too frustrated with
Argentina... I had no love to stay for... Also, the job market in Europe is
much tighter than in the US.
9) In the long term, what have been some of the most difficult aspects of
being a single mother careerwise since you came to the United States?
(travel?, conferences?, cost of living? Daycare?)
Money is an issue. Since I mostly take my daughter with me wherever I go, I
try to drive. I like to drive, and it is much cheaper. I found a very nice
after-school day care here, it is a children's museum, very educational,
with emphasis on diversity, run by a very special African American man.
Interestingly, it is crowded with faculty's children. It is exactly what I
would have dreamed of for my daughter. One hard thing is that not all
teachers allow her to do her work when we leave town ahead of time and she
has gotten lower grades this way on occasions. I only now dare to have her
play soccer, and I still have to see how I can handle the evenings, with
her homework, violin and soccer practice, dinner, my own work... and we got
a puppy this summer in addition...
Most people in my research area know my daughter by now, she is completely
unnoticeable during talks, and it's a long long time since anybody has made
a face for me showing up with her. It has happened in the past. In
particular the math conference center at Luminy (France) does not admit
children, on insurance reasons they say. Lo and behold, I had to miss a
conference this way. Years ago, at another conference I got that e-mail
asking if you have any dietary restrictions, disability, etc. I said well
we are all right but I have a little daughter... well it was not easy for
them to take that. Eventually we managed, they helped to locate a
babysitter (very expensive, but some talks I just wouldn't miss...).
B was 3 I think, then. I haven't had any difficulties in the US.
10) What are some ideas you would recommend to other single mother
mathematicians?
What so far has worked for me was always doing what I want. I don't know if
I'll make tenure, and I don't know how I survived it physically and
emotionally. I'm not sure I dare to recommend this modus operandi. I just
couldn't do anything else... On the practical side, these are my
suggestions: You need a notebook computer. You need dial up or other way to
work from home (dump the computer in your backpack, go home, plug it in,
keep working on your files). You need a cell phone (your land line will be
busy with dial-up...). It helps to be in a small place: I live five minutes
from campus. If I'm working at home, they know where I am and can have me
at school in no time if they need me.
You need a good day care. In general, I think day care is a good thing, it's
a whole social life and a whole variety of people to relate to for your
kids. Having only their close family to interact with is very confining and
puts a lot of pressure on kids. In the old times, kids were
community-raised in large families...
Raise your children social and nice to have around. This way they won't
irritate colleagues when you take them to meetings. Make a poker face when
showing up at meetings and talks with your child and a sack of toys. Now
that my daughter is 10 it comes easy to me, I guess I got a grip on it :).
Remember there's nothing wrong with being a woman, a mother, and a
mathematician. Childen and theorems are a normal part of your life, there's
nothing weird to it. It is also normal to have to be creative at juggling
both. As more women work in sciences, more kids will be around at meetings,
and that's OK.
11) What have been some of the more helpful things your departments and the
mathematics community at large have done to assist you?
More than departments I would say individual colleagues. I am still here
because of the people that believed in me, that backed research plans that
where very risky, that were and are patient with my slow timing and output
and unusual learning choices (who would go to Warsaw to learn Geometric
Measure Theory in 95-6?). And because of those that housed me, watched my
daughter, and carpooled me in Louisville and Baltimore before I re-learned
to drive and had a car. To Jacky Cresson (a mathematician), who helped us
switch subways to get to Charles De Gaulle coming from Besancon with all
the luggage (rolling staircases, stairs, etc, with a kid and all the
luggage). To Thomas, whose last name I forgot, and English teacher, who
picked us up at the Greyhound station in Louisville and took us to the
appartement we rented. To the management of that appartement, who in view
of the complications of sending a deposit from France reserved the
appartment just on my word by e-mail... Here, I borrowed the money for the
downpayment of my house :), it's of course payed back now.
12) In what ways could departments/universities and the math community
provide more support for single parents?
Ah, this is my question!
Several things we need:
Time!!! Handling all this is very time consuming, and exhausting, and we
aren't as fast at putting out theorems. Getting a grip on a new job also
doesn't come from one day to the next, it takes a while until you learned
to handle it all and have more of your brain free for math. Single parents
don't have a "wife" to run the household for them...
Emotional support!!! Letting us be without questioning the speed of our
output. Nothing is as damaging as colleagues who think you can't possibly
make it. Lots of emotional support!!! A competitive atmosphere is just a
killer. Unless they are perfectly fine letting you work at home... but does
it have to come to this?
It is highly nontrivial to be the only woman in a department, and a single
parent on top of it.
Don't let us do service!!!! Being well seasoned in human roller coaster
boundary conditions, most of us are good at working with people and have a
huge sense of solidarity. In addition, service makes you feel good right
away (immediate payoff!!!). But it eats up your scarce time, and some
colleagues will never value it, even when being good at it takes skills
that are unfortunately infrequent in our profession (I guess that's why
even responsible chairs tend to burden with service those that do a good
job at it, and make the department look good).
Fairness should include the awareness that a middle aged single childless
person has more time for math than a single parent of young kids.
Keep it flexible. Sometimes rules make things harder. It helps to just
negotiate one's needs and the department's needs in good faith, mostly it's
easy to match them up. One has to help in not being rigid, and it helps to
be lucky to have a chair that appreciates one's being cooperative and isn't
rigid either. And there's the old wisdom that if you aren't a pain a lot of
people won't be a pain to you either...
Keep a sense of humour if the logistics becomes complicated and something
goes out of line. If you take it in a stride, people around you likely will
too.
13) Any other comments?
Probably other behind-the-scenes ingredients to how things went were my
(very hispanic) notion that children are a natural part of one's life and
it's perfectly fine to sometimes take them along to work, and to work at
home while they are around, and to take them with you everywhere you go,
and to teach them to be nice and social and keep quiet during talks or
review sessions or when you give an exam. I have accordingly also had
students take finals with their little kids in the room, and helped keep
the kid busy while the mother was writing. Another vital ingredient is to
do what you want (rather than limit your life because it's safer). Without
some joy you wouldn't be able to cope and take on all the work and the
stress. (That's how I bought a house and have a cat and a dog and apple
trees without having tenure...). I believe in the value of having a rich
live. If we are to die tomorrow... wouldn't it be a sorry thing to check
out having only a few theorems to account for our time on this earth, and
missing out on all the rest??
posted December 14, 2003
by Marianne Korten
marianne@math.ksu.edu
PS: As of the beginning of 2006, I have just been tenured, and I have my
first NSF grant. I
had an 18 months EPSCoR-NSF grant somewhat earlier. I have just been invited
to speak at
the Spring 2007 Midwest PDE Seminar. To all who are dealing with very
difficult situations, I'd like
to say, stick to your daily work, eventually you see it accumulate and
harvest time comes. I am
also very pleased to see that I got away following my taste in mathematics
in spite of the riskiness
of the problems. My daughter just turned 13, and is doing very well, in
spite of teenagerhood.
Keep the good work up, believe in yourselves, and in your right to both have
a life and do research.
Don't be afraid of very hard work.
|
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Parenting Children with Special Needs
|
The following is an e-interview of Mary Elizabeth Bradley
conducted by Christina Sormani in September 2003.
Mary Elizabeth Bradley is an Associate Professor at the
University of Louisville. She specializes in
partial differential equations and mathematical modelling
and has 19 published papers. She received
her doctorate in 1991 at the University of Virginia,
She obtained
her tenure-track position at UofL directly out of graduate school
and, except for a leave of absence 1994-1997, has remained there.
During the years 1994-1997, she visited at MIT and Brown University.
1) Can you give a brief description of your career/research/family
life before your child was diagnosed with Down Syndrome?
Before R's birth, I had one child (a typical child) that is
2.5 yrs older than R. Basically, I found maternity and nursing a huge
drain on me and on my career (well worth it, I might add!) and as
such, I did very little research during my pregnancy with N. and the
year following. I had just started getting back into the swing of
research when I found out that I was pregnant with R. (This wasn't a
planned pregnancy, but it wasn't an unwanted pregnancy either). So,
the state of my career was a bit of a roller coaster, but with a
little up-hill momentum. An important factor was my having already
and recently obtained tenure. I had just begun learning a new field,
which was quite a jump from my thesis/tenure work. It was not a good
time for me to take on a new baby, especially one with special needs,
if career is the criterion for such choices. I still had no papers in
the new field and had just submitted my last paper in my former
research area during my pregnancy with R. (Research has always been
the toughest part of my job, so having a major interruption at a
crucial time such as it was in getting my footing in a substantially
new area has played a critical role in my current state of research.)
2) Did you take off time from work to help you deal with the news?
Did you focus on certain aspects of work rather than other aspects to
help keep yourself on track or distract yourself? Was your department
supportive of your choices?
I got a hint that R. might have D.S. from a blood test at about 16
weeks gestation. Follow-up (without amnio) indicated a perfectly
formed baby with a perfectly formed 4-chamber heart. So, I put D.S.
out of my mind at that point.
R. was diagnosed on the table. In fact, I never held her before the
news arrived. R. came in December, so I had already planned my
maternity leave. This was hard (let me stress HARD) to
get the University to arrange. There was no real policy in place.
So, I relied on the family leave act to get 12 consecutive weeks off
(6 without pay). The University then decided that they would not
start the clock at R's birth, but at the beginning of the spring term.
(Everyone gets the holiday week off, so this was really the only fair
way. But legally they could have started the clock on my 12 weeks the
day R. was born.) Because of this set-up, I already had the spring
term off from teaching. I was supposed to return to work in full
research mode on April 1, 2001. In fact, I did only a small amount of
work throughout the entire spring term. I helped with hiring (that
started at about 4 weeks postpartum) and also went into the office
about once a week to work with my graduate student. Other than this,
I did not do much work until I returned to classes in the fall.
The department was really fine with everything. Our chair was
wonderful and helpful.
No one on faculty expected me to come in. They all knew I had my
hands full with R.
Something that needs to be understood is that R. was a very needy
baby. There was no "distracting" myself, except that her heart
condition distracted me from the D.S. For 10 months I strove toward
R's survival. I cannot tell you how many doctors visits I took her
to during those early months. Her heart condition was sufficiently
severe that she failed to thrive. For 2 months we watched her weight,
every calorie expended -- even how much energy it took to nurse vs.
bottle feed -- before she even regained her birth weight. On top of
everything else, she had reflux, so that she threw up about 1/2 to 1
ounce per feeding. It was a nightmare, counting all the calories that
went in, how many were thrown up, how many were expended on the
"non-essentials" like baths. She was only bathed about once per week
just to conserve calories. We purchased expensive additives (not
covered by insurance) to boost her caloric intake per ounce of feed.
I pumped and "breast-fed" via bottle to conserve calories used during
feeding. Her heart condition caused her literally to break a sweat
while nursing. She had to work her heart so hard just to do existence
things. We did all kinds of things to keep her from crying so that
she would use as few calories as possible. I remember at one point,
just before she started gaining weight that I literally thought I was
losing my mind over the whole thing. I reacted as if it was a
personal insult when she vomited. It was a very crazy time, one that
even as I recall it now is a painful blur.
3) What helped you through this difficult time? Religion? Your
husband? Was anyone in the math community especially helpful? Did
your university provide counseling services?
Probably the most helpful
part of dealing with the diagnosis of the D.S. was the diagnosis of
the heart condition. Many of the symptoms of D.S. in an infant could
also have been symptoms of her heart problem. For 10 months, I acted
and practically believed that all of her problems were her heart, and
if only we got her to survive through the surgery, she would be okay.
This denial was an important part of getting over the hump with D.S.
By the time I had discovered what part of Rs problems were D.S. vs.
heart defects, I had already been living with the reality of D.S. for
over a year. Gradually, as R. recovered from her heart surgery, I
began to realize what D.S. was going to mean to us as a family.
Consequently, I did not have a one-time cruel blow to recover from.
The pain and grieving of D.S. was spread out over a longer time period
than that.
I have a strong faith, too, and this helped. However, going
through this time I was very lonely. We were just beginning to attend
a new church, so we as a family were not yet well established there.
Consequently, there was limited support there. They were great about
rallying with food & stuff during the surgery, though, which was an
awesome help!
My husband and I differed greatly in the way we dealt with the grief
over her diagnosis. This put a strain on our marriage. We both hurt,
and yet felt misunderstood by each other, so that we were not the
mutual comfort to each other than one might expect. In fact, going
through birth, failing to thrive, countless doctor's visits, etc., I
began to see why so many marriages involving the birth of special
needs children end in divorce. I'm only guessing here, but from what
I've seen of special needs families, the divorce rate is about double
what it is in normal society. Our marriage was (and is) strong very
strong yet I still felt so isolated during that first year in R.'s
life. We were grieving and dealing with things on separate tracks.
This was a huge shock to me. I always had believed that if we had to
go through something like this we would be "in it together": sharing
each others burdens, being tender and kind. I never expected that his
means of dealing with his grief would be in conflict with my way of
grieving.
In spite of the difficulties we had communicating our grief to each
other, my husband has always been enormous help in getting the daily
tasks of feeding, bathing and clothing our two girls accomplished.
This was especially true of our older child, N. The guilt can really
get you. I was so exhausted and so overrun with doctors appointments
and feeding issues and medications that I had nothing left for N. in
those pre-surgery days. It was awful...I wouldn't wish it on my
enemies.
As concerns aid from the math community, I first have to say that my
department in general rallied 'round and were very supportive. No one
even blinked when I didn't come back to work on April 1. When it came
time for R's surgery, the department chair went out of his way to
assure me that I had as long as I needed out of the classroom to take
care of my daughter. His priorities for me were to care for R. and
just ignore work until she was safely out of the woods. It was never
spoken, but everyone knew of the possibility for failure, or death,
from the surgery. It was a life or death thing and my first priority
had to be my family. Several people offered to help cover my classes
during Rs hospitalization. I was so grateful for that.
One moment in particular really touched my heart. A male colleague of
mine met me in the hall on one of those short visits to the department
(which grew longer through the summer as R's health stabilized). He
had tears in his eyes as he asked me, "How do you do it, coming here
and working? If it were my son, I don't think I could do it." The
tenderness of concern really touched me. It went beyond professional
courtesy and felt my pain. I cannot say how much that one moment has
meant to me as I have gone through the trials since R's birth.
I think that our university does have some counseling services, but I
never even thought about going there. I'm not sure why but there was
never even a thought in my mind to pursue that route.
4) Is there anything you think the mathematics and university
communities could do to help others deal with the difficult
news/choices you had to make?
There are at least a few things, some from an emotional support type
of reference frame and also some from the viewpoint of career help.
I'll address first the emotional support.
Everyone that I know who has kids likes to brag about
them, how smart they are, the cute things they do, etc. And most of
us in the academic community are fairly intelligent ourselves, so the
expectation is that we will have intelligent kids. When my first
child was born, there was no end to the congratulations and comments
about her and the expectations of beauty and intelligence. But when
R. was born, there was no question about having either a brilliant or
beautiful child. She was marked with Down Syndrome and thus she was
mentally retarded and would have a certain "look" to her that does not
speak beauty to most people. The academic community (in fact, the
world at large) does not know what to say or do when someone they care
for has a child like this. Most, being afraid of saying the wrong
thing, simply say nothing at all. One of the most painful things
during those early days was when I came into the office for the first
time after R. was born. I felt embarrassed and ashamed of having
borne an incompetent child. Many of my colleagues simply ignored the
fact that I had a second child. Now, if I had not had a child already
and had not also seen others of my colleagues go through the births of
their children, I would perhaps have thought that this was just "being
professional" and leaving home at home. But the contrast in welcome
between N's birth and R's birth broke my heart. I don't recall having
many ask to see pictures of R. and there were only a few words of
congratulations. It was as if R. simply did not exist. After being
the departmental "mascot" for a year during pregnancy, this was really
tough. For a year, everyone showed interest about when the baby was
due and how the pregnancy was going. Then suddenly, there was
silence.
If there is any message I can send home, it is this. A child was
born. Regardless of the pain of her diagnosis, I had again become a
mother and that in itself is worth speaking to. When you have a child
with a syndrome, you desperately want people to say,
"Congratulations!" and too look deeply at your child with a big smile
on their faces. You want to hear that it's a pretty baby, no clause
about her being pretty "for being a Down's baby." Saying nothing and
failing to inquire about a child is in some way saying, "I can't
acknowledge a defective child." Nothing could hurt more. Even now, I
have colleagues that are just finding out that I have a second child
and that she has D.S. (I've been pretty well off the conference
circuit since her birth.) I'm seeing colleagues for the first time
since her birth that have been informed about her condition. The
awkwardness hurts so badly. Please, inquire. Show me you care.
Please, don't avoid my eyes when I speak of her...don't rush when
looking at her picture. Please, do ask to see a picture of her. She
is not a monster. She's a baby. Don't suddenly hush the conversation
about your child's achievements when I walk into the room. I, too,
have children and want to praise their accomplishments. Listen to my
praise for my late-blooming one, who walked at age 2.5 and at age 2.75
still does not say "Mommy." When it does happen, it will be worth
great rejoicing!
Concerning the career aspects, I have a couple major suggestions.
1. Offer to collaborate on a research project, and make
it clear that you don't expect quick delivery, don't mind providing
extra guidance and background, and don't mind publishing partial
results rather than a seminal paper. It is miserably difficult to get
back up on the research horse after having 2 or 3 years of being
totally focused on survival. I'm attempting to do that now and the
jury is still out as to whether my research career will make it or
not. I haven't had a paper submitted since I was pregnant with R. My
departmental colleagues have been wonderfully patient, not expecting
much during these difficult years and not giving me poor marks on my
annual reviews. I am humbled by this and want to express my intense
appreciation for that.
2. When your colleague is in crisis, offer to grade papers for them.
I got terrible teaching evaluations the semester that R. had her
surgery. A major complaint was that I didn't get homework and tests
graded quickly enough. It was
true! Some homework
came back to the students after their final exam! The fact was, I
could not muster the additional energy and time to grade. Our
department does not have graders for any class, so there is no way
anyone would think I had one. (Those of you in departments with funds
for graders, just thank your lucky stars!) It just never occurred to
anyone to ask...and I was too embarrassed to suggest such an
imposition on someone else's time. Even a small amount of help in the
grading arena would have been a great =
blessing.
5) Briefly describe your child's heart
condition/operation or give a
weblink.
R. had 4 heart defects: an Atrial Septum Defect (ASD), a Ventricle
Septum Defect (VSD), an unclosed PDA. (these are the a., b. and c. of
the classification -
Acynotic and a leafed mitral valve (#2 under Mitral
valve diseases ~ 3/4 of the way down) on the web page:
http://www.whhi.com/congenital.htm
6) How much time did you give yourself to spend with your child at
the time of the operation and recovery?
I spent one week in the hospital with her. (This is literal.
I slept on a daybed sort of thing in her room.) She came home on
Friday, Oct. 5 and I went back to work on Monday, Oct.
8.
7) In what ways were your department/university supportive? What
additional support would have been helpful at that time?
I think I have already answered this one above...
8) What aspects of work were the easiest to handle at this time?
None. I remember wishing that I could have taken the entire
first year of R's life off, even without pay, but we were not in a
financial position to do that. I think the university would have been
supportive of this, had I been able to manage it
financially.
9) How
did you reintroduce yourself to research?
I am currently
trying to do this after many previous attempts that have not been very
successful. My plan of action is taking a semester sabbatical (Fall
2003) and trying to build up collaborations. (All of mine pretty well
dried up during the last 3 years of inactivity). I am not sure that
I'll make it back over the hump. It's a bit of an inertia thing.
Once you get rolling, it is not so difficult to roll. But if you have
been stationary, getting the boulder to move takes massive effort and
concentration. Since I am still the mother of a toddler, and one that
is developmentally delayed at that, it is miserably hard to get that
level of energy and focus going.
10) In what ways could the math/university communities provide
additional support for mathematicians who need time to help a
seriously ill family member?
1. Offer a small re-entry grant to help with S&E and travel
expenses. Allow this to be used for computer software/hardware. Most
grants exclude this, but it is really needed!
Well, my little one is now on my
lap trying to feed me a "cookie" (really it's a coaster), so my time
for this work is at an end for now. This session was written from
5:00 - 7:00 a.m.
It is now 10:15 p.m. and time to revisit this e-interview...
2. Let the clock stand still, if the person so desires, concerning
tenure and promotion. I had tenure (got it just before R. was born)
so this was not an issue for me. But I could not even imagine the
pressure if I had to go up for tenure a couple of years after her
birth. That level of stress would probably have driven me right out
of the field.
3. Again, especially if you are a senior member in your colleague's
research area, offer to collaborate and help them get reestablished in
their research program. Perhaps even submit a joint proposal with
them to help them get back to where they were before.
11) In the long run, how have you handled having a child of special
needs? Are you able to attend conferences? Do you need flexible work
hours? Do you often work from home?
I handle R. much like a
parent handles any child. When she needs me, I am there for her.
This means a lot of hardship for my career. I am just now starting
to attend conferences again. I usually get maybe one or 2 per year at
most. And these typically need to be very short, like 2- or 3-day
conferences. This summer I went for 8 days (a 4-day conference, but
also with weekend stay). It was the first truly restful break for me
since R. was born. I had a chance to talk with colleagues I had not
seen for as much as 6 years. It was wonderful to be "back."
I absolutely must have flexible hours. Otherwise I would never be
able to manage all of the doctors appointments, therapies, and other
general interruptions that come with having children in general and a
special needs child in particular. I have taken to believing that my
work is "task oriented" and to simply try to get things done fast
enough to have the time available for R's and N's needs. I can't add
hours to my days, and there is no way I could get everything done for
the girls on just evenings and weekends. I do work from home, but if
the girls see me they want me. As an example, R. will not let me sit
at the computer and work, but will be in my lap (or crying while
trying to get into my lap) and then pounding the keys as I am trying
to type. There are many times, though that they are distracted to
play without me and I can be reasonably productive at home during
those times.
12) How has your department/university been accommodating your needs?
They have been wonderful. So far, no one has to clocked my hours or
has demanded that I be in the office for 8 hour days. If my teaching
evaluations are good and my students are satisfied, then I've
succeeded in the teaching component of my job. They have been
extremely patient on the research productivity end of things.
(Much more so than I could have hoped.) It seems that my colleagues
consider productivity not necessarily to be measured in the number of
papers submitted and accepted. They are happy to count the many other
efforts toward productivity. This includes, for example, training
graduate students, working on new areas of research for a period of
time without publications, attending workshops, being mentored, as
well as being collegial in talking with other researchers on their
problems and generally showing interest in what my colleagues are
doing. Thus far, no one at the university has criticized my
productivity...except myself, of course. I am a very harsh critic of
myself. Most of the time, I feel inadequate and ashamed of my feeble,
often unsuccessful, attempts at research. The fly in the ointment is
concentration, something that I have only in low quantities. I wish
that I could do more, that there was more of me to go around.
13) In what ways could the math/university community help other
parents in your situation?
Be reassuring. Lower your expectations of their performance until
life again stabilizes. And realize that this time period may be
measured in years, not days or weeks. (For my husband, this required
about a year, until R. was safely recovered from surgery. For me, the
time has been much more extensive due to her continuing health and
rehabilitation problems.) Praise the work that does get done.
Offer to help were possible. But most of all, be Patient and Positive
(with capital P's!). Take a moment to reiterate this positive
attitude to your colleague. Remind them (especially the mom's) that
they are doing well for what they have on their plates and that you
are proud to be their colleague. For me at least, emotional support
goes a long way toward building back what has been let go. Knowing
that my colleagues acknowledge that my struggle did not end with R's
surgery would be a great boon to me.
14) Do you know of any helpful websites?
I am sorry to say that I don't.
15) Pot Porri: Other questions you would like to address.
These are the
hard questions that Christina was too polite to ask, but which I have
been exposed to, either before I had a special needs child or as the
unspoken, but well understood question on the faces of friends,
neighbors or colleagues.
15a) Didn't
you consider abortion? Don't you realize how much this child will
consume in resources (health benefits, welfare, your time & energy)?
Why would you choose to have this child and then labor so hard to save
her life, considering her heart problems?
No. My religious beliefs keep me from even remotely considering the
option of abortion. Her life is a life that God has sent and I
respect His timetable in bringing her life to fruition and completion.
Now, having said this did it ever occur to me that my life would be
easier if choice was a choice for me? Sure. The agony of knowing
that my second and last child would (possibly) have D.S. was a
horrible specter, which haunted me. Never did I want my elder child
to have another burden to bear during my husbands and my old age
and after our deaths. If there had been a way to erase the pregnancy,
reversing time and playing a re-do, I would probably have been in
front of the line requesting it. In fact, I am very glad that I did
not know of a certainty that R. would have D.S. The simple hope that
perhaps she would be typical helped me get through my pregnancy
without too much emotional pain. But never could I have ended this
pregnancy without an even greater specter haunting me that of the
lost possibil is, even so early in life, on state and federal
budgets. We receive therapies during the first 3 years of Rs life,
virtually free of charge (a monthly co-pay of $50), which the state
must pay for. Yes, it humbles me. I am so grateful for all that the
Commonwealth of Kentucky has done and continues to do on behalf of my
daughter. I do notice the amount of money ou to make happy. She
reminds me that my perspective on what is healthy, good, even normal,
is skewed by my cultural bias toward my own personal ease. She has
made it easy to look at and smile at almost any disabled child without
grimace. Truly, these are blessings.
15b) What
are the biggest challenges you face in trying to raise a child with
D.S.?
My kingdom for an ounce of impulse control!
R. has no concept of what it is to control her
impulses, nor does she have a clue about why such control would be a
good thing. As an example of this: She was chalking on the walls in
the basement, when I told her to stop and come chalk on the
chalkboard. She looked up from her artwork with a look that said,
Why? This one (the wall) is closer. After much insistence on my
part, she gave in to my demands with a sigh of resignation. It was
very clear to me that she had no idea why I thought the chalkboard was
the place for chalking. It was also clear to me that she cared about
pleasing me, even if my request made no sense to her.
This leads also to the question of discipline. This is an amazingly
difficult challenge, because it is not clear what avenue to take. At
her present developmental stage, time outs would have to be enforced
by tying her to the chair or physically restraining her amidst her
fear-laden cries. (This mom's heart isn't up for that) Spanking
isn't a recommended mode of discipline for any child, and even less
for a child with low muscle tone. With low tone, the skin has a less
receptive nerve response than that of a person with normal tone, so
that a general slap on the hands may actually feel good! (So much for
it being a discipline!) Taking things away, like the crayon if she
marks on the walls, is a little bit effective. (At least there won't
be any new marks on the wall until she gets a hold of the crayon box
again!) The only truly effective discipline is natural cause and
effect. Example: We had tried
everything to get R. to stop pushing
off from the table while sitting (with seat buckled) in her booster
chair. Well, she continued until one day she pushed the chair over
with a bang, complete with head hitting the floor. She has never
pushed her feet against the table again. The moment she gets an itch
for it, she stops abruptly. Now, this is all well and good, except how
do you teach her not to put her hands on the stove? (She can just
reach to put her fingers around the heating unit.) How do you teach
her not to run out into the street?
These are serious problems, since
the cause-effect mechanism would come at an outrageously high price to
her. And again, what do you do
about issues of property damage or politeness and etiquette? At this
point, I dont have any answers. Suggestions are welcome!
Another biggie is the impossible demands that a special needs child
brings to motherhood. To help R. on the road to her best self
requires so much time, energy and creativity that I cant imagine
anyone joyfully stepping up to the plate and saying, Yep, I can do
that. No problem! Personally, I shrink from the task, often
overwhelmed both by the enormity of the task and the enormity of the
consequences should I fail to press onward in completing it.
15c) Is there any information about Down Syndrome that you would like to
tell the general public?
Yes. Very few people without a special needs child have any idea of
what is involved in their care, nor do they understand what conditions
are involved. For example, when you say "Down Syndrome" the immediate
thought is a picture of a mentally retarded person with a particular
look about them. There is no idea of what current expectations for
such a child are, nor of the level of involvement that it takes to
bring such a child into their full potential. Here, I want to comment
on what I view as the major issue for
children with D.S. (and most chromosomal syndromes) and it is not
mental retardation!
A child with
a "syndrome" typically has "low muscle tone." This is distinct from
muscle strength. The tone refers to the muscle's "readiness to do
work" or the underlying tension in the muscle when the muscle is
actually at rest. With good tone, a normal baby/child will perform
graduated movement fluidly. Without it, muscles jerk from one extreme
position to another. To perform even the most basic of movements, the
child must be taught how to use additional strength to compensate for
lack of tone. Learning to compensate takes hours upon hours of
physical, occupational and speech therapy, not to mention hours upon
hours of practice when the therapists are not there. At least one
parent is expected to attend these therapy sessions (R. has 4 one-hour
sessions per week). No one chides you if you can't be there, but it
is clear that your child will only achieve as much as you are willing
to invest yourself in his/her improvement. This is an additional
difficulty in balancing career and family that the typical
mathematician never has to deal with. And the problem is tough enough
without it!
15d) Is there anything else you would like to add? (A few little
tidbits on what to say & do and what not to say & do when a colleague
has a special needs child)
1. The capacity of special needs children to learn and to become
contributing members in society is changing rapidly. No longer should
one assume that the diagnosis of D.S. implies that this child will not
grow up to be a reasonably self-sufficient adult. Dream high
expectations, while leaving a safety net for those expectations that
will remain unfulfilled. It is a very difficult thing to balance
"reality" with your dreams for your child. My dreams for R. are much
the same as for N. The difference is that I know that R.
will some day reach her limitations, and
that ultimately I will have to accept those limits even if they are
far below what I want for her.
2. The
grieving process with a syndrome like D.S. is never completely
finished. At every milestone there is another reminder of the long
road we've taken to get there, and how far behind "normal" R. is.
This leads to the question of how much farther she ultimately will be
able to go. It never stops hurting completely. It more or less
undulates, with times that are very good and feeling very content and
other times that are so painful it is hard to speak of.
3. It doesn't help me to hear that you saw a person with D.S.
scrubbing tables at McDonald's "and doing a great job of it!" I
really don't want that to be my daughter's ultimate job experience and
am pained at such a thought. Don't tell me how "wonderful" it is that
my daughtemight actually learn to read on a 3rd grade level. Don't
enthusiastically condemn my child to a future that would pain you to
see your own child in. But yes, observe
the people that you see in society that have these syndromes and who
have made incredible strides to get as far as they have. Then
dream of how much farther my child may
go, standing their shoulders.
Posted November 10, 2003
by
Mary Elizabeth Bradley
bradley@louisville.edu
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