As my third and final rotation is coming to a close, my present advisor (who I’ll call B) asks me:
“I hear that you’re planning on joining E’s lab. I’ve been meaning to ask you was there anything aversive about your experience here that shaped your decision?”
I replied “…not at all…” and said nothing more. I assumed that, by virtue of the fact B’s lab encompasses much of the same space and personnel as E’s lab, that B knew of my inclinations to join E’s lab from the start.
I assumed wrong.
Even though I was all but certain that I had already secured a place in a different lab, I put my total effort into this quarter’s project. I figure that if the department has enough confidence in my potential as researcher to support my ass, I had better not disappoint them by sluffing off at the first opportunity. In hindsight, perhaps my hard work signalled to B that I had designs on her lab. After all, I’m quite pleased with how this quarter’s project has turned out and I’ve learned a ton (i.e. primate handling, design of psychophysical experiments and a good many of the statistics needed for analyzing them).
In my program, the whole process through which students choose their labs is wraught with political sensitivities. I’ve heard that many other research oriented graduate programs employ a more formal means of matching students to labs. While I would ordinarily claim that I have little need for formality at all, I will admit that it is often an effective reducer of social awkwardness. I think that a more formal lab selection process would have made my transition into my permenant lab considerably easier for all involved parties.
3 replies on “MaXXimum Awkwardness”
I wish someone would just assign me to a job, at least during law school and the first one after.
But that would reek of communism, and we wouldn’t want to put that into print.
Have you seen good night and good luck? Good stuff. Made me paranoid.
I have seen “Good Night and Good Luck”. As best as I can tell, it accurately captured the communism induced parnoia of that time period. When the ever increasing work demands of our present free market driven “democracy” drives the masses to the limits of exhaustion and depression, our system will implode and communism will be our next best option. I think that it’s no longer a matter of ‘if’ but a matter of ‘when’. All the more likely these days considering our every growing debt to China.
i like masks, even though I am not a monkey. good job on your project! you can present it to me this weekend, and i’ll pretend i’m gabe. nothing better than your g/f pretending to be a chimp.