Eastern European Guide to Writing Reference Letters
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Re: Eastern European Guide to Writing Reference Letters
#2This is about references in academia. Very detailed, still a good read.
Re: Eastern European Guide to Writing Reference Letters
#3This is about references in academia. Very detailed, still a good read.
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.
Re: Eastern European Guide to Writing Reference Letters
#4I 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.
Re: Eastern European Guide to Writing Reference Letters
#5This 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.
Re: Eastern European Guide to Writing Reference Letters
#6"The Grand Canyon is ‘awesome,’ The Heavenly Cosmos are ‘awesome!’ This? Maybe interesting. But definitely not ‘awesome!’"
— Harlan Ellison
Re: Eastern European Guide to Writing Reference Letters
#7I 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.
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.
Re: Eastern European Guide to Writing Reference Letters
#8I 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.
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.
Re: Eastern European Guide to Writing Reference Letters
#9I 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.
Re: Eastern European Guide to Writing Reference Letters
#10I 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…
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.