Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Last Woman Standing
I hate days like this, where I opened the lab early this morning, and due to a variety of reasons, I'm now officially the last woman standing. Now if only this solvent will hurry up and vacuum off so I can go home...
Monday, November 17, 2008
Hard Lessons
I wanted to report that I’ve learned and grown since the incident, or even since I started this blog. I really wish I could, I wish I could say that I have risen above, and that he’s an asshole (he is) and that he’s never going to respect me (he isn’t) so I don’t give a damn. But I can’t.
My typical day goes like this:
Around 8am: open the lab, spend the next hour or two alone in lab getting work done, happily. This is my favorite time of day.
Around 10 am: people start trickling in, this is fine, and we say our good mornings, exchange pleasantries.
Around 11 am: they come in. “They” are the aforementioned pig and his girlfriend. At this point I put on headphones, and turn up the volume so I can’t hear them talk.
Throughout the day I occasionally chat briefly with the other three (we got a new grad student, yay!), sometimes talk to the boss, this is usually when they’re at lunch. I spend ~80% of my day in silence, with headphones on, trying to avoid the glares, ignoring the way he talks to her, and generally trying really hard to pretend that it doesn’t bother me.
Then I go home (time varying between 7 and 10pm).
The upside? I’m focused and productive.
The downside? I’m lonely – and consequently very chatty when I go home (my poor husband).
I know I should just ignore him, and move one without caring what he says about me, but right now this is the only way I know how, and it sucks.
My typical day goes like this:
Around 8am: open the lab, spend the next hour or two alone in lab getting work done, happily. This is my favorite time of day.
Around 10 am: people start trickling in, this is fine, and we say our good mornings, exchange pleasantries.
Around 11 am: they come in. “They” are the aforementioned pig and his girlfriend. At this point I put on headphones, and turn up the volume so I can’t hear them talk.
Throughout the day I occasionally chat briefly with the other three (we got a new grad student, yay!), sometimes talk to the boss, this is usually when they’re at lunch. I spend ~80% of my day in silence, with headphones on, trying to avoid the glares, ignoring the way he talks to her, and generally trying really hard to pretend that it doesn’t bother me.
Then I go home (time varying between 7 and 10pm).
The upside? I’m focused and productive.
The downside? I’m lonely – and consequently very chatty when I go home (my poor husband).
I know I should just ignore him, and move one without caring what he says about me, but right now this is the only way I know how, and it sucks.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
November, Seriously?
How did it get to be November? Where did this semester go?
I'm having one of those periods where I'm just insanely busy - midterm, group meeting, visiting family, weddings, travel - all in 2 weeks. I'm happy to report that I seem to be on the tail end of it and have survived.
Anyway, I've posted before about the asshole chauvinist in my group. The one who says I need a man to think for me. I really need to give him a name. Anyway, I commented to another group member the other day that I was hoping he'd skip group meeting (it was rumored he might) because I am just too tired to argue with him. My friend brushed this off, told me not to worry.
I gave group meeting yesterday. I was about 3 slides into the presentation, really getting into the meat of part one (I just wrote a paper on this and was just presenting on the final piece of the puzzle), when he interrupts in his loud bully manner with "I just don't understand why you're doing this experiment at all". Mind you, I've presented on this experiment multiple times. Back when we were friends he was all for it. This was OBVIOUSLY a personal attack. I knew it was coming, I wasn't surprised. My boss jumped in pretty quickly and defended me. Since I'm operating on minimal sleep I let him (maybe this wasn't the best decision on my part, but que sera sera at this point). They argued it out for a while, and the boss even made a snarky comment at him later, which I must say was pretty awesome. I've never really seen the boss flex his muscle against the asshole quite like that before. I think if his argument would have had merit it would have been a different story but this was obviously him just picking a fight with me. Anyway, he halfheartedly tried again at the end of my presentation and I shot him down, but the reaction from the group was overwhelmingly that he was an ass. The friend I had talked to before was shocked, he couldn't believe that I was right that the asshole was going to attack me. The boss stayed after to tell me not to worry about him, and seemed shocked when I calmly said that I expected him to do that.
The point of the story? Maybe I didn't stand up for myself as well as I could, and I took the easy route out, but for the first time since I got here I can really tell that people are starting to see this labmate for what he truly is. A chauvinist pig.
In honor of one of my favorite bloggers - Dr. Isis:
The artists rendering of the labmate (no offense meant to the animal):
I'm having one of those periods where I'm just insanely busy - midterm, group meeting, visiting family, weddings, travel - all in 2 weeks. I'm happy to report that I seem to be on the tail end of it and have survived.
Anyway, I've posted before about the asshole chauvinist in my group. The one who says I need a man to think for me. I really need to give him a name. Anyway, I commented to another group member the other day that I was hoping he'd skip group meeting (it was rumored he might) because I am just too tired to argue with him. My friend brushed this off, told me not to worry.
I gave group meeting yesterday. I was about 3 slides into the presentation, really getting into the meat of part one (I just wrote a paper on this and was just presenting on the final piece of the puzzle), when he interrupts in his loud bully manner with "I just don't understand why you're doing this experiment at all". Mind you, I've presented on this experiment multiple times. Back when we were friends he was all for it. This was OBVIOUSLY a personal attack. I knew it was coming, I wasn't surprised. My boss jumped in pretty quickly and defended me. Since I'm operating on minimal sleep I let him (maybe this wasn't the best decision on my part, but que sera sera at this point). They argued it out for a while, and the boss even made a snarky comment at him later, which I must say was pretty awesome. I've never really seen the boss flex his muscle against the asshole quite like that before. I think if his argument would have had merit it would have been a different story but this was obviously him just picking a fight with me. Anyway, he halfheartedly tried again at the end of my presentation and I shot him down, but the reaction from the group was overwhelmingly that he was an ass. The friend I had talked to before was shocked, he couldn't believe that I was right that the asshole was going to attack me. The boss stayed after to tell me not to worry about him, and seemed shocked when I calmly said that I expected him to do that.
The point of the story? Maybe I didn't stand up for myself as well as I could, and I took the easy route out, but for the first time since I got here I can really tell that people are starting to see this labmate for what he truly is. A chauvinist pig.
In honor of one of my favorite bloggers - Dr. Isis:
The artists rendering of the labmate (no offense meant to the animal):
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