Professors and their children adapt to new places when work takes them abroad
By Sarah Khan
Jan. 7, 2011 1:11 a.m.
Joan Silk’s job takes her ““ and her family ““ everywhere.
Silk, a UCLA professor of anthropology, studies social behavior in children and primates. But for researchers in any field, traveling around the world often comes with the job.
When Silk took year-long sabbaticals at universities in Germany and England and spent summers in the Fiji islands working with children in an isolated village, she took her children Ruby and Sam Boyd with her.
For 16-year-old Ruby Boyd, adaptation has been the key to enjoying her traveling lifestyle.
Silk took her family to England for a year-long sabbatical research when Boyd was 11. Boyd was opposed to the move when she found out she had to attend an English private school that had classes on Saturday, she said.
“I could not unaderstand that ““ it was so foreign that you’d go to school on Sturday,” Boyd said. “It was one of those things that I just had to do … getting up at 6 a.m. on Saturday thinking “˜this is not right, this is not okay.'”
But Silk’s other sabbaticals gave Boyd some unexpected advantages, such as being able to learn German while her parents worked in Berlin.
“It was a great experience for my kids to live in a place where they got that language experience,” Silk said.
Such is often the life of traveling professors and their families, whether it be for three months of summer research or a one-year sabbatical.
Robert Cousins, a physics professor who works with the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator in Switzerland, was surprised at how quickly his 7-year-old daughter picked up French while enrolled in a school on the border of France and Switzerland around 14 years ago.
It took only six months in a French school for her to become fluent. Along with living in a different country, learning a new language is a skill Cousins said contributes to a more diverse background.
In Switzerland, Cousin’s wife and daughter became part of a close network of other researchers’ families. The network helped them to meet new people and become seamlessly integrated in a different culture, he said.
Silk, too, discovered the importance of culture when she sent her son to a kindergarten in Germany and never packed him a morning snack like the other mothers.
“It turned out that all these other kids had a snack in the morning. He went to school without breakfast for three weeks before I finally figured out that I was supposed to send him with breakfast,” Silk said.
“It really humbled me about how hard it is to be an informed and engaged parent in those circumstances.”
Silk also worked every summer in an isolated village in the Fiji islands, which gave Boyd a taste of life without American or European luxuries.
“We lived in huts made out of palm tree fronds and there is no hot water, so showers are taking a bucket of cold water and dumping it over your head,” she said.
But for Boyd, the opportunity to meet new people and become a more independent person beats out the hardships of a traveling life.
“One of the things I love is having friends all over the world,” Boyd said. “It’s an amazing thing, I can go anywhere and have someone I know.”
