以下是她老板的回贴:
Hello, Everybody. My name is Shen Youqing. I am the one who has been accused by my former student, Wu Weiwei, as “cold blood”, unreasonable person posted on this BBS. website.
I did not know I was famous due to this before a person unknown to me sent one of the posts yesterday afternoon. Because she put her own version of truth there, and she pretends to be nice weak girl, there are some tears for her. After I browse part of the discussion, I decide to post my response here. If you have any questions, please send them to me at
[email protected].
I swear I tell the truth. If not, you feel free to put any curse on me.
1). Motivating students. I discuss very often with my students either by having a chat or on group meeting. Here is what I said to them.
“I worked both in company and in the university now, being hired and hiring sb else (mean sitting in committees). We all know that local people are much easier than us to get a job. It is not all because of discrimination. First, they have no problem with communication. They easily find sth in common, say talking baseball, during interview. Just by talking this, they will feel close already. Plus, they can easily perceive a local person growing in the same culture, but not a foreigner growing up in a different culture, just like us that we are easily to perceive a Chinese, but not easily perceive an American. They are thus more comfortable to hire a local person. Also, we usually need the company to apply for green cards for us, not a big deal for big companies but at least put an extra work for human resources. Therefore, if you are not significantly better than a local candidate, you will not be hired. But how do we demonstrate our capability? We have to show them your hard evidence. The only thing is your publications. If you are in MIT, Harvard or with a Nobel Prize winner supervisor, the school or the supervisor itself is a golden brand. You may need not to have too much to get a good job. But unfortunately you did not have a chance to be in those top 10 and your supervisor is no-name assistant. What we can do is to work together to have good publications to show your capability. For us in such as medium (or “LAN” by sb), this is the only way. Imagine you graduate here as a foreigner with no publication and poor English, can you get a job here? Even you want to go back China, the universities in China is not cheap now. You will not find position if you do like this.
I believe what is said “the reason or luck that we can survive on the piece of land is that not all local people can work as hard as us”!
For your publications, I surely share credits because I also work for them on grant and for ideas. But who get more credits? Let say you have a Nature paper. I surely feel shining. I may get promotion in 4y rather than 5-6y, but how much difference is? But with this paper, you can knock the doors of the best universities or best companies with good salary and position. Therefore, we work together and share the credits. You can not say “you work for me or my slaves”.
This is summary. I discussed with her in English and Chinese, but seems no use to her.
As for graduation, I told everybody in my group that I expected them to graduate in 3y, and as long as he or she get enough results, he or she can graduate in 2y. I do not care about time but results. I made a promise to them that I will not hold them by using any excuse.
2) The project: Even though my projects are not the best one, I feel them interesting. I first assigned her a “CO2” project. You may know that recently years the government support research to store CO2 in some places (e.g. deep underground) because there is too much CO2 in atmosphere; otherwise the global temperature will constantly increases. But CO2 separation is too expensive now, and not feasible for storage. I plan to use new approach to separate CO2. She did not tell me she was not interested in. Later, I learned from my colleague that she is interested in drug delivery. I hesitated because of her skill and work attitude. She always put her reaction there and disappeared without observation! Especially, working on cells needs extra time because once experiments begin, you cannot stop and need analyze immediately. But she would stop the reaction and put in the refrigerator, and process it in second day, whether early or later of the day. But I want to make her working hard without pushing. I tried to change her project to gene delivery, which she claimed to be interested in. But before I said, she told me “I will not do any experiments involving organics”. All my work involves organics synthesis (actually most of them are simple and she does not have the ability and background to run complicated ones). What can you do if you were me?
3). Literature reading: Last semester she had only 3 courses. She was asked to take English class but she did not. She had almost all afternoon free. Thus I asked her to read one review on CO2 sequestration. We are only interested in CO2 separation. SO I asked her to read this section (less than 10 pages). Even at the end of the semester, she did not finish it, and did not check any cited literature there? That’s what she claimed literature reading. Do you believe she was in her office reading?
4) Her vacation: Last semester on Dec. 15, only before she went to Japan, and only when I asked her to do some work, she told me that she was going for Japan. Because she said she was newly married. I did not say anything but that you should let me know earlier for both guidance and safety reasons. She came back on Jan 17, but still did not came to the lab until Jan. 21 I called her. She said she did not feel good. Her working time for the left time of Jan. totally was less than one day! In the middle of Feb., the department had some summer stipend enhancement (~$600/per student). I wanted get them for all of my students, but my department secretary told me “Weiwei does not need it because she will be in China”. If you say you are happy with that, please let me know I want you as my mentor to learn how to control temper. I did speak loudly at her in my office. She then went to see our department head crying and accusing me for everything.
5) Her work: If you see how did experiments, you may laugh at me how I got such a student. She did experiments just like a person cooking but afraid of splitting oil contaminating her clothes! Form Jan. 21 to Feb. 29, she only have ca. 5 experiments (typically 1-6 h). Generally she put the reactor in water bath then disappeared without observation! In the afternoon, she took out and processed it in second day. Here there are many chemists, what results will you get if you do this?
Because she does not have any polymerization/organic synthesis background, I asked her to do simple one first. I told her even though it is simple, it is a new system and basic research. It will also be publishable, at least on a journal better than the one of she claimed her SCI paper (Synthetic Metals (2003), 137(1-3), 1515-1516). More importantly, she gets trained first. But she said “well, what is applications? No use for basic research? How do you know it works, and so on”. I needed explain one by one. That is her attitude.
Last week I asked her to work harder. “You need come to work on weekend (one day) because your project got nothing”. She then went to see our graduate coordinator and accused me of interfering her rights!
6) Her credibility: I never know if she tells the truth. I just want to give you two examples. In her last e-mail, she did apologize to me, but she said “ but I did not know you were my supervisor, and you supported me. Nobody told me…”. However, in her offer letter, it was clearly indicated that “Dr. She is you supervisor….. and support you”. I also ask her friend who recommended her to me if she told her I would supported her. Her friend said “ Surely she knows and I told her”. Another, she said “I do not know your research involves organics”. Do you believe her claim? She applied with checking my web page? Shanghai has so many WANG BA if she did not have a computer! I also asked her friend, but she said “surely I described what kind research we are doing. Surely she knows we are doing organic synthesis”.
She disappears in the lab, but if you ask, she surely has very reasonable excuses, maybe in library or not feeling good.
7) My decision: I noticed that some of you are angry at my “cold blood”. Typically “she already apologized but he still fired her”.
We all went through the process “TOEFL-GRE-APPLYING-Anxious waiting- borrowing money for air ticket”. For so many years, how much time and money we investigated? how many times we struggled in the mooning to get up for reading English? Who will forget those? Especially, she applied for 30 universities in 2 years, but did not get any offer. I took her only because her friend recommended to me. At that time, I just started here without any experience on this. I thought it might be better to have one who we know. She graduated from Shanghai Jiaotong University, not a bad one.
However, for these several days she did not appear in the lab at all. I discussed with our staffs. What I was told is “Youqing, I do not think you can do with her. She seems always want to do things in her own way. She was supposed to take English class in last semester because she came later in the summer, but she never listened to me. We assigned her office. She complained lots, and she is the only one. Even during her applying, she always sent us e-mail “I want…”. I came back my office I saw her e-mail. My department head came to my office. He wanted to discuss with me if we should keep her. I showed him the e-mail, and then he said “that’s it. We can do nothing then” . Later, I got the e-mail and knew that she was putting those distorted truth on the BBS with my payment!
At this point, I should not fire her? Those who want to kick my ass please let me know if you should! If you are proud of her, and think she promotes our Chinese student profile in your universities, please help her to transfer to your group! Also I want to say, we all struggle on the new piece of land. I want to ask, if you could do what I did if she does all of these to you? Also, my colleague already told me that “she may just want to hang around and wait to transfer to her husband place.” You have the right to transfer, but do you have the right to just foolish your supervisor? If the project fails, where is the support? One guy said “for a Chinese Prof, just use him to come here. Once here, kick him off”. I just wonder if this kind person is human being or animal!
By the way, before I made the decision, I called our international student office and asked if her visa would be a problem. I was told that if she could support herself, there was no problem for this semester. She was paid $2000/m for the past 6 months. Here the rent is about $250 (2 bedroom shared by 2 person). She was proud that she could buy a car in two months. All others are about $1400/m. I struggled one Ph.D. enhancement for her from the college.
Here is what I wrote in the whole night. This will be my only response to her. I will not feel any pain any more. My last advice to her is still “if you want others to be reasonable to you, to be reasonable first”. In Chinese “Ni Jing WO YI CHI, WO JING NI YI ZHANG”. And also, to be a human being, you need have “Liang Xin”.
Finally, I appreciate your encouragement, suggestion and criticism. From this time, I have learned a lot. I know what I should do in future. If you have any comments, send me an e-mail. Even though some of you say this university “LAN”, I still enjoy doing research here. Please visit my website to see if we have sth in common. If you are working in close areas, I hope to learn sth from you.
Sincerely Youqing Shen
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