Coffeetime Science: Thanksgiving, Expat Style

What Thanksgiving means to non-American scientists living in the US

It’s Thanksgiving week, and something rather unusual happens in the institute during this week every year; meetings are cancelled, experiments are postponed, and most people take the entire week off and travel home to their families. Most US citizens, that is. Katja, Narges and I are talking about our Thanksgiving plans – none of us are American, and many of our colleagues aren’t either. “It’s amazing how quiet the institute gets this week” Katja remarks “I’m always astonished how many people take the whole week off” Narges and I agree. “Apart from us non-Americans, we only take the Thursday off, maybe the Friday if we have no experiments going”.

Just because we don’t take the whole week off, that doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy celebrating Thanksgiving our own way. Instead of spending the day with our families, who are scattered across different continents, we generally spend Thanksgiving with many of our colleagues at someone’s house, eating and drinking all day, sometimes with more than 20 people. “Remember last year? We celebrated Thanksgiving at our place” I recall “It was a hilarious mix of French, Germans, Brits, Brazilians and Spaniards, as well as my American friend Rosita*, who took the whole thing in stride.” We had moved on from eating and drinking to playing card games and drinking, and one game in particular caused a lot of hilarity due to lack of knowledge of certain words and also different cultural interpretations of certain situations. “Rosita told me later that it had been quite an experience when a particular (rather rude) word had come up during the game and she, as the only American and the only person familiar with the meaning, had to explain it to a room full of PhD’s looking at her with blank faces” I chuckle. Poor thing, she took it well.

“Actually, that is one of the things I really love about working in science” Narges reflects “It’s both interesting and fun to work with people from so many different countries from all over the world, and to interact with them outside of work and learn about their customs”. Katja chimes in “Yes, I think sometimes it’s easy to forget how special the environment we work in is, and since it’s Thanksgiving, I think it’s something we should remind ourselves to be thankful for”. Agreed. We get talking about what else we are thankful for about working in science: Being friends with many of your colleagues outside of the lab; Having the opportunity to travel to conferences; Having a job that constantly challenges you and in which you always learn new things; Flexibility and relative autonomy in the lab (depending on your boss); Working on something that might help others down the line. “Imagine that our contribution to science, however small, might lead to a new vaccine or treatment in the future – how amazing would that be? I think that is the most abstract one for me to grasp”, I conclude “But it is definitely something I am thankful for.” With that, we finish our coffees and start thinking about our shopping lists for our Thanksgiving meal.

*Still on the Sesame Street Theme…

My name is Christine, and I am an immunologist. After my undergraduate studies in Oxford, I moved to London for my PhD and first postdoc. After 7 years in this magnificent city, I was ready for an adventure and decided to go to Boston for a second postdoc. Six years later, I’ve made Boston my permanent home, but I am currently on an 8-month sabbatical back in London, where I am learning new things at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine before returning to Boston. In addition to doing research, I write a series of blogs about conversations and discussions I have had with other scientists, with topics ranging from the inane to career goals and options, our research, new techniques and technologies and the like. I would like to share some of those topics with you in this blog. Want to join in? Grab yourself a cup of your favorite caffeinated beverage, read along, and leave comments. You can read my other blog posts here.