[HN Gopher] Eastern European Guide to Writing Reference Letters
___________________________________________________________________
Eastern European Guide to Writing Reference Letters
Author : hunglee2
Score : 102 points
Date : 2022-08-29 07:54 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.inference.vc)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.inference.vc)
| rr888 wrote:
| I kinda feel thisn't about Eastern Europe, its USA vs the rest of
| the world. The "25 things British Say vs What they mean" meme is
| pretty similar.
| https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/25-things-britis...
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't think it is -- the suggestion is that there's a
| spectrum of positivity, where Americans describe things very
| excitably and Eastern Europeans tend to be more modest. So we'd
| both be outside the norm from his point of view (the actual
| norm if you polled every English speaker would I guess be
| skewed a bit more in the American direction).
| marstall wrote:
| strange list - all of those phrases have the same way of
| functioning in America - cueing a listener to "read between the
| lines" and flip their meaning.
| arka2147483647 wrote:
| This also has the other side that an American style cv, for
| example, might be seen as "too positive" from eastern European
| perspective, and thus be ignored. That is; you read 10 CV's, all
| go through the roof of your superlative scale, therefore you
| ignore all of it, or consider all candidates as more-or-less
| equal and/or mediocre.
| wirrbel wrote:
| A common reaction is: It cannot all be positive.
|
| Or, as a colleague of mine put it: "When I first interacted
| with americans, they were smiling so much I suspected they were
| trying to trick me in some way".
| oblio wrote:
| azekai wrote:
| We are? I suspect many of us are trying to trick ourselves
| as much as everyone else.
| oblio wrote:
| I love how my previous comment was even flagged :-)
|
| They're artificial smiles, I guess you're programmed to
| use them from an early age.
|
| I've literally seen an American coworker, from a
| distance, with a normal resting face, put it on once they
| were at a range where they'd realize it's me, then
| immediately drop it after passing by (I turned around
| precisely to see the follow up).
|
| My impression is that they're supposed to be a sign of
| success. A sort of Instagram reality before its time.
| People smiling are usually happy and probably successful.
|
| Plus, of course, it relaxes the interlocutor and makes
| them feel appreciated, up to a point.
|
| All in all, a gimmick.
| nottorp wrote:
| As an Eastern European, those permanent Hollywood smiles
| where they bare their teeth make me think of a dog
| threatening me :)
| [deleted]
| bobthechef wrote:
| tchalla wrote:
| > Poor reference letters hurt students. They give us no insight
| into the applicant's true strengths, and no ammunition to support
| the best candidates in scholarship competitions or the admission
| process in general. I decided to write this guide for students so
| they can share it with their professors when asking for reference
| letters.
|
| How about the university itself sharing the guide with professors
| when asking for a recommendation? Students have enough to do and
| adding more one on their list sounds ... odd.
| dekleinewolf wrote:
| The university is not directly in contact with the specific
| professors of its prospective students though?
|
| When the Eastern European students ask their professors to
| write them a reference letter to Cambridge, the prospective
| students can point their professor to this guide. I'm not sure
| how else Cambridge is supposed to reach 'potential professors
| of potential prospective students'.
| teddyh wrote:
| "The Grand Canyon is 'awesome,' The Heavenly Cosmos are
| 'awesome!' This? Maybe interesting. But definitely not
| 'awesome!'"
|
| -- Harlan Ellison
| Tomte wrote:
| Re: reference letters and cultural clashes: "all in all a very
| good second-rate mathematician"
|
| https://mathoverflow.net/questions/53122/mathematical-urban-...
| rmind wrote:
| I have to say "Eastern European" is a quite poor and unhelpful
| generalization nowadays.
|
| It is ethnically and linguistically diverse: Slavic, Baltic,
| Finno-Ugric, Romance (Romania) as well as Albanian and Hellenic.
| It is religiously diverse: Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Muslim
| and even the bastions of irreligion/atheism (Czechia and
| Estonia). There are significant cultural differences, especially
| comparing the more reserved north (Finland and Baltics) with the
| more emotional south (Balkans or even parts of Ukraine). There
| are also major economic differences, with central/north east
| being more or less high-income economies compared to the south
| and east-east. It even has inconsistent geographic definitions,
| e.g. whether it includes "Central Europe", whether it extends to
| Turkey or even Caucasus, etc.
|
| Many generalizations really don't work for such a vast and
| diverse region.
| izacus wrote:
| None of that is really relevant for the post as written though,
| what were you trying to say?
|
| I had a lot of experience working across mentioned boundaries
| and the post is very spot on with cultural differences between
| US and most cultures in Eastern European region. I'd also argue
| that Germans/Austrians easily fit into the same generalization
| and would benefit from reading it.
| aliqot wrote:
| >what were you trying to say
|
| I see this type of behavior a lot as of late, especially on
| HN. Mostly when someone says "I donated to X charity" then
| inevitably a brave contrarian comes out of the wood works to
| say that they could/should have done XYZ
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I basically read it as a polite way of saying 'I can't work
| out how this comment relates to the article (which it
| should) and I would like to give you the opportunity to
| expand on the connection or restructure your comment to be
| related to the article instead of using the heading as an
| excuse to talk about some distantly related thing you care
| about.' I could be wrong though.
|
| I think it tends to give better results than just arguing
| about whether something is on topic and the parent
| commenter probably does have some more specific things they
| could say about Eastern Europe here.
|
| I don't believe I've witnessed something exactly like your
| example though I've seen plenty of disagreement on this
| site. I don't think that's what happened here.
| jenny91 wrote:
| Nobody counts Finland as part of their definition of "Eastern
| Europe".
| oblak wrote:
| A guy from South Africa once made the same argument about
| Sweden. Whether he was right or not, geographically speaking,
| does not really matter. We all know what everybody means.
| Nordic good, Eastern bad. Sadly, it's mostly true.
| badpun wrote:
| Geographic middle of Europe is somewhere in Poland. Seeing
| that Sweden is distinctly north of Poland, it makes total
| sense to count it as Northern European country.
| oblak wrote:
| Maybe I didn't make myself very clear. His point was that
| Sweden is in Eastern Europe.
| curiousgal wrote:
| Now you know how I feel reading all those articles about
| "Africa".
| sdvsa wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing, but about Asia.
| yrgulation wrote:
| You just made some people's heads pop off. Eastern Europe being
| diverse? High income economies? Some folks are stuck in little
| bubbles where they think of east europe as a weak backwards
| region. Until a war breaks out and half the world goes hungry,
| western europe scrambles without energy and some countries
| shiver at the thought of nuclear fallout. For better or worse
| east europeans should stick their heads up a bit more often.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| This isn't a very helpful observation. By Eastern European, I
| presume he means the former Soviet Bloc. It has nothing to do
| with ethnicity, language, or culture, and everything to do with
| the lingering effects on organizational and academic behavior
| imposed by communist and totalitarian regimes. From Romania to
| Lithuania, this impact can have a remarkable consistency.
| kergonath wrote:
| A lot of this advices are actually useful for some Western
| European people, at least France and Germany (and possibly
| Italy as well).
| anovikov wrote:
| In my perception (i come from Soviet Union), the most "East
| European" Eastern European country is Slovakia. When someone
| says "Eastern Europe" that's what comes to my mind. Czechia is
| too rich and too liberal, Poland is too religious and too
| conservative, Romania has too many issues with minorities and
| simply does not constitute a single picture (different parts of
| country look like different continents), Serbia is hopelessly
| stuck in the past and developed a hermit mentality, Hungary is
| a true oddball in every sense of it, but mainly is that it has
| it's own imperial past - not one of it's occupiers - so does
| not match the humble, hardworking and simple "East European"
| image.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Romania has too many issues with minorities_
|
| What kind of issues and which minorities?
| anovikov wrote:
| I think that will be politically incorrect to discuss in
| detail and will drive us way into downvoting territory...
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Why? GP made some pretty bold claims on some
| nationalities( _" Romania has too many issues with
| minorities"_).
|
| I expect some clarifications for those claims on what
| those issues are, so I can tell if knows what he's
| talking about and got right info from reputable sources
| or if he's just puling stuff out of his ass based on
| stereotypes and FUD he read on the internet.
|
| Without any details or sources, such comments should be
| flagged.
| ssizn wrote:
| And if you put details and sources you get flagged too.
| It's a waste of time to discuss this kind of stuff.
| bonzini wrote:
| Roma (also present in Slovakia and Hungary) and Hungarians
| mostly.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| What are the issue with Hungarians in Romania? Besides
| political FUD.
| [deleted]
| oblio wrote:
| > also present in Slovakia and Hungary
|
| And Bulgaria, and Serbia, ...
| bonzini wrote:
| Yeah just listing the countries from the grand-parent
| comment. Their presence covers a lot of European
| countries (all the way to Italy and Spain in the west)
| kind of by definition, since they're a nomad population.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| armchair reader here - but I have 100 year old demographic
| information from the Hungarian region, in an article about
| language history. Each Hungarian province sub-division is
| split between four (or more) language groups - and the splits
| are quite uneven. Many of those groups had mass conflicts
| over the last thousand years.
| krn wrote:
| > Many generalizations really don't work for such a vast and
| diverse region.
|
| I think the right solution here is to divide the region into
| Central Europe, The Balkan Region, and The Western CIS and
| Caucasus:
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Map-of-Eastern-Europ...
| oblio wrote:
| Nobody lives in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Everyone is
| Central European.
| Swizec wrote:
| Now now, we Slovenians change that depending on who's
| asking. Also time period.
|
| Wanna talk economic prosperity, work ethic, and things of
| such nature? We're Central European, basically German.
| Wanna talk partying, good food, sense of humor, and having
| fun? Proudly Balkan. Unless you want healthy food, then we
| are definitely Mediterranean. Oh good pizza and pasta? Yeah
| we're basically Italian.
|
| Funfact: It is unknown quite how large the Slovenian
| diaspora is because many emigrants wrote down "Austrian"
| before WW1 to escape slavic stereotypes in their new home.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> economic prosperity .. basically German
|
| > Slovenia_
|
| I don't know mate, if Slovenia was so prosperous, then
| their workers wouldn't be driving 2h/day commuting to
| work and study in Austria for the chance of making 2k
| Euros/month. Or just moving to Germany, UK, Ireland, etc.
| for more. Every slovene I talked to seemed very unhappy
| about the wages/CoL ratio back home.
| Swizec wrote:
| Oh it's far more aspirational than real :D
|
| With a tinge of "We work hard like the Germans! We're not
| like those other people from the area. Please hire us".
|
| My understanding is that under Yugoslavia we were the
| most prosperous region by far. Then the export market
| collapsed and we realized "Shit, most of our economy is
| oriented towards former Yugoslavia!" and we started
| reorienting towards central europe.
|
| But central europe has plenty other even cheaper markets
| to import from. So that's been a problem.
| euroderf wrote:
| IIRC "Central Europe" wasn't really in usage during the Cold
| War. The concept re-emerged after B.Wall fell.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| As someone who deals with a lot of PhD applications I have to say
| I pay very little attention (if any) to reference letters.
| Nonetheless, if I were to then this seems like sound advice.
| udev wrote:
| I appreciate the author's intention to help.
|
| But I can't but be annoyed by his stance that "I am at
| Cambridge", therefore the way I prefer things to be formulated is
| the correct, universally accepted way.
|
| What's wrong with honest, no-nonsense recommendation letters? Why
| is flattering and positive language a requirement?
|
| I am sure the author knows how to differentiate "you are doing
| brilliant work" coming from his mother vs coming from the leading
| researcher in his field, and interprets each version accordingly.
|
| Similarly, what stops him interpreting "this is a good,
| promising, student" differently, depending of where it comes
| from?
|
| --
|
| And I agree on another point with the author, yes it is
| "excruciating" to read recommendation letters, and also, it is
| "excruciating" and soul-crushing to write them if you are not
| used to telling white lies, and it is also "excruciating" as a
| student to deal with getting one, especially in institutions
| where the professor-to-student power distance is much higher that
| in western universities.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| This is intended for students that go to Cambridge, of course.
| I thought that was obvious from the article?
| udev wrote:
| From the article "In summary, please take time to write
| strong recommendation letters for your best students."
|
| "of course" and "obviously" it is _not_ intended for
| students, but for professors writing recommendation letters
| for student that _intend_ to go Cambridge.
| paganel wrote:
| I appreciate the author of the article wanting to do good, but
| the last thing we need here in Eastern Europe is even more brain
| drain.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Believe me it wont be this article that will cause a brain
| drain.
| pastage wrote:
| You just described how to get brain drain, by limiting the
| development of your students you will for ever be stuck with no
| outside influences. Students will often come home even if they
| get education abroad.
| oblio wrote:
| This ONLY happens in countries with high salary ceilings:
| China, India, etc, or countries with high QoL despite low
| salaries: Southern Europe, Czechia.
| petre wrote:
| After you invest in a good education abroad, you are
| definitely not going back home to put it to waste working for
| cronies or doing 'crisis management'. You're only going back
| home if you're outsourcing work from developed countries,
| competing on a new market with less players or getting
| prosecutor's office position and an opportunity to lock up
| some of the old boys.
| paganel wrote:
| > Students will often come home even if they get education
| abroad.
|
| Nope, that "often" part is false, at least when it comes to
| most of Eastern Europe (maybe in other parts of the world
| things are different).
| [deleted]
| dontlaugh wrote:
| It's tragic so many of us have had to leave after 89. And I
| completely agree with you that this trend must be fought.
|
| However, I also think helping students have better lives is
| good overall. Many of us come back later. Perhaps if in the
| future there is a political change back towards worker power,
| many more of us will come back. And we'll have useful skills
| honed in the meantime.
| petre wrote:
| Political change? You're too optimistic. And about worker
| power, Eastern Europe is going to have a South Asia workforce
| soon. I met a couple of nice Bangladeshis this weekend. They
| are working in my country. I choose to welcome them, as they
| probably get enough mistreatment and xenophobia at work.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Political change will happen as the global crisis
| intensifies. Whether it'll be towards fascism or towards
| socialism, we'll see.
|
| All workers can seize the means of production together,
| Eastern European and South Asian. It has happened before
| all over Eastern Europe, it can happen again.
| bitL wrote:
| So your students in some provincial eastern European
| university can barely get a C on an exam, trashing their GPAs
| in the process, closing life-long opportunities, because of
| the "only the professor deserves an A" attitude that then
| translates to reference letters and everywhere else. The same
| student then gets a 3.8+ GPA at a top 10 US university with
| glaring reviews of their work and 10x higher compensation the
| moment they decide to enter the industry. How are you going
| to stop the brain drain?
| [deleted]
| petre wrote:
| Not really, they get good results in school but so so
| domestic employment opportunities. Even in IT we're
| basically a country where work is being outsourced. Nobody
| is going to stop the brain drain, unless Eastern Europe
| economies grow to become G7 members, which is highly
| unlikely.
| ggeorgovassilis wrote:
| This is about references in academia. Very detailed, still a good
| read.
| izacus wrote:
| All of this holds true in private corporations as well. The
| baseline for praise is much much different between west coast
| and eastern europe which can be problematic in performance
| packets, reviews and general manager/employee communicaiton.
|
| For us Eastern Europeans the takeaway is to exaggerate,
| exaggerate and when in doubt praise some more when talking to
| Americans. Otherwise, your reports or your own performance
| review might be viewed as very negative to people that have
| grown up on "shit sandwitch" type feedback and praise.
|
| Culture Map is indeed a good book to read.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Kinda also reminds me of star ratings. For USA it seems 5
| star is average. 4 star is bad.
|
| Where as in other parts 5 star would be stellar.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm fine with giving, say, books on Amazon a 3 or 4 star
| rating if they were basically "OK." But, yes, in a lot of
| contexts, anything other than a 5 star rating is considered
| bad and everyone knows that fact so more than a few "only"
| 4 star ratings and the Uber driver gets kicked off the
| service, the AirBnB owner loses their superhost status, or
| someone misses out on their bonus.
| bobthechef wrote:
| euroderf wrote:
| This is why I never provide feedback to apps that involve
| people (e.g. ride "sharing" apps): Anything less than 5
| stars is an internet slap in the face.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Even so...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-08-29 23:02 UTC)