Katy Dickinson

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http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog/date/20050606 Monday June 06, 2005

Letter from my Grandmother

Here is a letter written around 1943 by my Grandmother which I think is worth passing along. My Grandmother died at age 85 in 1990 and my Mother found this draft of a letter to a magazine editor when she was sorting estate papers. My Mother is the 12 year old mentioned in the letter. Within a year of this letter being written, my Grandmother had her fourth and last child, a girl. My Grandmother was a homemaker and a poet (sometimes published in local newspapers and little magazines). The four children turned out to be an artist and Professor at California College of Arts & Crafts, an executive Vice President at American Express, a lawyer, and a grade school teacher. There were 9 grandchildren and (so far) 6 great grandchildren. So, her child rearing ideas worked well.

Dear Dr. Wood-Comstock,

In the August issue of "Life and Health" a letter was published about a four year old girl, and I am writing hoping that you will forward this letter to the parents, for I believe I can understand something of the problem. I have a little boy, now four, and a boy and girl, now eleven and twelve. The girl is a year older and we went through that three and four year old stage (and five and six) when friction between the two was of course irritating to the family, but never-the-less only natural. After all, children of three and four are little more than babies and should not be expected to act like grown ups. Certainly whipping is not the way to meet the problem for any temporary "making them behave for half a day" is far outweighed by the permanent harm it will do in warping a child's nature - making her feel unloved, resentful toward parents and brother, creating a nervous tension in the home which will mose certainly react upon a child's nervous system.

Naturally children cannot be allowed to make a habit of kicking and hair pulling but there are ways to end this - and I do not mean "mental cruelty". With a great deal of love, patience, and understanding of the children's points of view, a parent can usually iron out the difficulties. Often little children who are together constantly grow very tired of each other, and having them play in separate rooms for a while each day helps matters. Sometimes quarrels arise when both are tired, or hungry, or hot. I found that in such a case a warm bath with time to play in the water with a toy or two would sooth both their tempers. Lack of something to do may cause quarreling and parents are well rewarded for helping their children plan their play. Busy with making a block city, or an indian wigwam out of an old quild and a chair, or a doll tea party, or a parade of toys, children can be happy and well behaved for hours. Of course they are going to both want the same toy at times and of course they will argue sometimes - but that is human nature. Even adults are not always perfectly cheerful and pleasant at all times. I do not think that these small quarrels should be taken too seriously - every parent with two or more children can expect them. Parents can "talk things over" even with small children, explaining that they must try to get along well with each other, that they must not fight and fuss and they will respond much better than to a whipping. To tell a child that she is "born that way" with a bad disposition is to firmly fix the idea in her mind and she will probably live up to it. To realize that when little brother was born she felt (as all children) that her place was taken by another - and to give her an extra show of affection is to win her love and cooperation now and in later years as well.

When my children were small my husband said he did not ever want his children to associate him with punishment when he came home at night. He had to be away from them at work all day and the time that he saw the children at night he wanted to be a pleasant time for them and for him. His own father had been one who punished him severely and often and even now, as a grown man he feels resentful toward his father. My children love their father, they respect him and will do anything he tells them to do, but he has never once whipped or even slapped any one of them. It seems rather hard to imagine a father who realy has the welfare of the children at heart severely whipping a little child of three or four unless he himself has a pretty ungovernable temper.

We have tried to have the children understand that there are certain things which are right and certain things wrong, and that the rules laid down for not doing some things are made for their benefit. They cannot play in the street, they must respect other people's property and rights, they must go to bed at a certain time, etc. There are not too many of these hard and fast rules but the children know they are important. For the rest we do not give too many orders and are not too strict about every small matter. A parent can make an issue of things a dozen times a day and the constant friction wears on the nerves of both child and parent. Perfect behavior is too much to expect.

As children grow older new problems arise, and it seems to me that if parents are to have their children's love and confidence and cooperation in the trying adolescent years they must win that love and confidence in the years of early childhood. Children need to feel they are loved, that their parents are wholeheartedly interested in each of them. They will, I believe, respond with good behavior.

All three of our children are high spirited with wills of their own and pretty dictatorial natures. I would not want them to be otherwise for these qualities, properly controlled by the individual person, make for leadership in adult life. In learning to get along with each other, and to conform to the family group, they are learning self control and how to get along with other people.

Letter by Evelyn Van Gilder Creekmore, Knoxville, Tennessee USA, 1943

Posted at 02:21PM Jun 06, 2005 by katysblog in Home & Family  | 

Music Says it Simply

My daughter Jessica is preparing for her music teacher's end-of-year recital on Sunday. Dina Mirskaya has Jessica singing Durante's "Danza, Danza", Webber's "Close Every Door", and a duet with Nina of Lehar's "Music Says it Simply". Jessica's vocal range is moving lower - she can now sing either Soprano two or Alto comfortably - so Nina's higher voice gets her the girl's part while Jessica sings for the boy. Since they will both wear evening gowns, this will be interesting. Jessica says that Soprano ones get most of the good parts.

Today is also the first day of finals at Harker. Jessica took her Latin exam this morning. We are putting together Jessica's performance outfit at the same time as she is discussing Victorian romantic poetry (for Honors English), and preparing for tests in Chemistry and Geometry. She already took the European History advanced placement exam and choir does not have a final test.

My son Paul does not have finals so today his 7th grade class is off at the Raging Waters water theme park for their end of year party. All he has to finish this last week is collecting money pledges for the countries he named and located in Mr. La Sala's Geography-a-thon to benefit Heifer Project. I think Paul made over $100. The 7th grade wants to collect over $5000 to donate enough for two "arks" worth of animals.

Posted at 12:14PM Jun 06, 2005 by katysblog in Home & Family  | 

Engineering Mentoring Program

Starting our second week of SEED applications, we now have 23 Established Staff applicants and 12 Recent Hire applications. Applications are due 17 June. The announcement to Sun's managers of interns just went out this morning so we may get more Recent Hire applications soon. I have gotten lots of email with questions. I try not to just send the traditional RTFM response to the large number who ask questions already answered at length by the FAQ or the application form. I also end up writing quite a few emails to those who apply anyway even though they are not eligible. I try to make these as prompt and respectful as possible - those folks may be potential applicants in future years. We usually have over double the number of applicants than we can accept - that is, we don't have to lower standards to make a quota.

One of the challenges of running this program is managing the selection criteria. Since we started in 2001, we have run two Sun Sigma (6 Sigma) projects associated with SEED, including one mostly on selection criteria. We have the following caveat emptor in the Selection Criteria section of SEED's "Participant Selection Process"-

    The goal is not perfection but improvement: the best we can do right now. We don't know what the absolute success factors are because each person and their experience are different. The program staff regularly gather data on program participants to understand success factors better.

One area we have struggled with from the beginning is getting the right balance between the criteria for the two SEED groups. All SEED participants have to meet the four basic requirements:

  • All Participants are in Engineering.
  • Only regular Sun employees may participate.
  • Superior performance ratings are preferred.
  • Manager support is required.
In addition to these basics, the Established Staff group has both a minimum service requirement (2 years) and a minimum seniority requirement (Principal grade level). The Recent Hire group has a maximum service requirement (2 years) and no seniority requirement. For the Recent Hires, we have an executive Selection Committee that reviews SEED application materials for the following. Applicants are not expected to excel in all areas or meet all criteria.
  • Academic Performance
  • Demonstrated Leadership
  • Demonstrated Technical Excellence
  • Enthusiasm shown in the Program Application
  • Demonstrated Creative Ability (inc. Patents)
  • Work History
  • Ability to Communicate
  • Publications

Once someone has been a regular employee long enough to have gotten an annual performance review, selection is somewhat easier because their management has already given a formal evaluation. We can use the manager's rating as a baseline for discussion. These selection criteria are based on an extensive demographic study we did in one of our Sigma projects plus tweaking we have done over the years to try to get the best mix. We want our criteria to be fair and reasonable and to identify a group of Engineering staff who will grow and support SEED's priorities:

  1. Value, satisfaction, and retention
  2. Build Sun's Engineering community
  3. Work to balance the diversity of Participants (geographic, demographic, & professional)

I know we are doing something right because we usually get 90% or higher satisfaction ratings on quarterly reports. I don't know which is more inspiring - the passion of the SEED participants to learn and improve or the passion of the SEED executive mentors to help people behind them on the career path.

Posted at 09:30AM Jun 06, 2005 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  |