Friday, October 2, 2015

More Work?

I've been back in the lab, post Qualifying Exam now, and the steam is starting to pick back up. The 3 weeks I took away from the lab to study for it weren't really 3 weeks away, but the main focus of my work had stopped. I've begun setting up experiments and getting plans together but since then, I've been added to another 2.5 projects bringing the total up to 5.5. On the one hand, I don't know that I mind that much because it should result in the publications I need to graduate, however, the boss still seems to expect that everything is being moved forward every week and while I've only been back in the lab for 4 weeks, I don't have too much data to show because my experiments take ~45 days to set up and execute. When I'm not working on my main projects, I'm also managing the lab for him (this includes: attending safety meetings, making sure others are trained and follow the safety standards, maintaining lab supplies, managing the lab "chore duty" schedule, making the reagents that we all use) with no additional pay bump (not that I've asked for one). I do see he is a bit more "lenient" with me than the other members, but I still can see the surprise on his face when I don't have "more data" for him from week to week in this past month. I'm not really sure what he is expecting or where else I can improve. It never seems to be good enough. I always get the fatherly disappointed face when I can't remember a paper we discussed over a year ago (journal, authors, year published, main factoid of the paper) which is...exhausting and exasperating. I feel like he has forgotten what it was to be a grad student, or maybe just that his expectations are too high, or maybe a combination of factors but I do know that he pushes us pretty hard with little to no acknowledgement of the times we do perform or do succeed and it gets old.
I'm just starting my 3rd year and I feel like the next 2yrs that I have left are going to be nothing short of brutal. Buckle up and let's get down to business.

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