Fur One Week

Ive been hyperactive and over thinking and running in place. Screamed at work for the first time in the animal area. This Asian postdoc who got to lab after me. She has one communicated paper and got worked over in house on something else. Basically the good paper came from another lab at school here, our doc was a coauther but it blew the story. I see poor political awareness. So anyway it turns out she only sort of speaks English. She speaks in a way that depends on her perception of how you act and look in person to decide what you are communicating to her.

So she has in the past been sharp with me, she is a sharp person, speaker, scientist, whatever. I am a molecular kinda guy. Shes more of a neuroscientist. Its cell biology if you have pictures of cells I think too. Anyway its easy for people to decide that this girl is a total bitch. She has a good hearth though, this one.

So I start trying to counter her declarative statements late on a friday and she only gets louder and faster with more declarative advice about how I am not agressive enough and do not work hard enough and dont look like I am having a good time. The third is a valid point and the two previous I have to submit to the environmental report. I simply cannot give in to doing what the boss says. This is a crucial issue.

I havent replied yet to the email that made no sense. He is still away. I ran a suspenseful experiment today and I want to see the result before I bother telling him he makes no sense. Perhaps it wont even come to that. Early in the day I met with a student a year over me, talking about postDoc labs and styles. We both would like to be acemics. That is what we will pursue. I know maybe three other people at school like that. I wish there were more but Im not going to complain about that.

Key to my argument with said postDoc she says Im complaining. She started the whole damn conversation, but I might have slipped by saying it was hard to work in our lab, Ive worked in other labs, etc. Its true, I feel it, but I can tell no one else that ever. But you gentle reader. So I apologize after her riposte that shes insulted. her answer to my position that Im insulted. I leave the room. I return, I tell her that I was insulted, but that Im sorry.

"have you ever heard that people say they are sorry to make themselves feel better"

Then I say we shouldnt talk anymore. She keeps talking. I fend her off slightly verbally and stick in the headphone and she is still going. SHUT IT.
This other guy in the room skates out in three seconds. She stops, but still is muttering some declarations to me. Then she says she is sorry, She didnt know I was sensitve, I looked like I was not sensitve, etc. She says its good that I yelled.

I win for not shutting her off. She said she cares about me. This girls carreer is a trainwreck in my mind. It doesnt have to be, but her science is totally isolated from everyone else in the lab, and the field. She loses at conferences shoozing becasue she bitches people out about how she disagrees with their scientific statements. The comment to me that she is a bitch. I try to say its a language thing, she means well. I try to understand her work, or the importance, or she says it shows that the connectivity is redundant and multigenic and shit. Like what the fuck. When is it not? Thats life, honey. My editorial suggestions go out the window. Then they dont publish yet. I will be really disapointed if I find out in 3 years that these were all awesome works I saw operated and written up and published from. She fought me to say that I shoudl not take a bailout project yet because I mentioned that I countered a boss line about the looming future. Me to him is what is that project you are mildly threatening me with. Dumbo project. That wasnt my goddamned point to her though, it was the plan B that I thought she was asking about at the outset. What if this doesnt work. Why dont you be more optimistic about the place and less about your pinpointed experiments that might not show you anything.

I cant believe that girl didnt understand or beleive me when I apologized. She said something like I dont believe in apology. That was so upsetting to here. It was important to have happened. Today was action packed. This other guy at work, will only shrug if you propose that he become a prof. He sent me a script that I have been idly thinking about. Now I would try it out, if it were not for the liscences.