Over the years, I've told colleagues and friends about things I have seen or experienced. Many times, people have said that I should write them down so that they won't be lost and forgotten, since some of them might be useful parts of our history. I've been writing them down, without being sure what I would do with them. I decided to gradually post them on this website, and see what reactions I get. I suggest reading from the bottom up (starting with the August 2017 post "The Meritocracy"). Thoughtful and kind feedback would be useful for me, and would help me to revise the exposition to make it as useful as possible. I hope that while you read my stories you will ask yourself "What can I learn from this?" I'm particularly interested in knowing what you see as the point of the story, or what you take away from it. Please send feedback to asilverb@gmail.com. Thanks for taking the time to read and hopefully reflect on them!

I often run the stories past the people I mention, even when they are anonymized, to get their feedback and give them a chance to correct the record or ask for changes. When they tell me they're happy to be named, I sometimes do so. When I give letters as pseudonyms, there is no correlation between those letters and the names of the real people.

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Three Reasons

When I was offered an opportunity to spend the academic year 1979-80 as a student at the University of Cambridge, I went to a Harvard junior faculty member who was from England, and asked for advice. He told me:

No one in the Cambridge maths department will speak to you, for three reasons:
  • The first is that you're a woman. The other students are reserved Englishmen who are shy about speaking to women, so they won't speak to you.
  • The second reason is that you're American. They're not accustomed to speaking to foreigners, so they won't speak to you.
  • And the third reason is that they don't speak to anyone. So they certainly won't speak to you.
This was both a good joke, and good advice. I did become friends with some of the other students, but it helped to know in advance that I would have to try harder.

When I returned for a brief visit a year after I left, I was surprised that I was greeted warmly by faculty who had seemed oblivious to my existence when I was a student. Some of the people I met in my year there are friends to this day.

There are many communities in the world, with different customs, values, and traditions. It makes life interesting. Some of my richest experiences come from living in another culture.