This started out as a response to The Lab Pixie's last comment, but I decided to post it here instead.
Nobody in my real life, not even my husband knows about this blog. The things I share here are things that he doesn't understand, or gets tired of hearing about. My best friends all live scattered across the world and I don't see them often enough. My family lives thousands of miles away. I can't talk to my labmates, that's for sure. I read science blogs for a while before starting my own, I found comfort in hearing that my experiences weren't abnormal. My husband doesn't understand this world - his department is like a whole different planet, and he loves it there, so for him to try to understand what goes on daily here is hard. When I tell him that my boss, as assholey as he is isn't going to change because they're all the same, he gives me idealistic bullshit in response. Because I reached a point where I needed to get this out, and I had nowhere else to turn, I started to blog.
I'm so glad I did. I feel like I've made friends here that understand what graduate school is like for me. People who understand that sometimes I just need to complain, and especially people who understand my relationship with my advisor. I can't tell you how many times I've seen myself in other people's posts, and it helps to know I'm not alone. That sounded more sad than I meant it, but my point is, I've met people here who get it. Really get it.
So, thanks guys, your comments, advice, encouragement and experiences mean more to me than you could ever know.
About Me
- Mrs. Chemist
- I'm a married chemistry graduate student, taking it one day at a time and hoping to learn something new while I'm at it.
People I talk about
2 comments:
It is so refreshing to see that someone else has a husband who just doesn't "get it." My husband, as a result of the environment in which he grew up (treated like he was god, everything he said was brilliant, etc.) thinks he has the answer to EVERYONE'S problems, but the truth is that he provides shit solutions for what goes on in the lab, because he JUST DOESN'T GET IT. I had a pretty bad unbloggable situation with my advisor, and my husband just had bad advice after bad advice, and when I didn't take it (because it is just NOT appropriate to storm into his office and threaten to quit if I don't get my way; in all honesty, I'm a graduate student; I'm disposable, and my husband doesn't seem to comprehend that). It was really a low point in our marriage; he kept telling me what to do, I knew he was wrong, everyone in my lab was reassuring me that listening to my husband would make the situation far worse, but by not doing what my husband was suggesting, he was just getting pissed at me for not doing "everything possible" to remedy the situation. I'm so glad to know we're not the only one who is unable to discuss lab problems at home just because the other one doesn't understand the environment.
Mr. S. loves to give me pep talks. And advice. And tell me how to deal with my supervisor. And it irritates the hell out of me. He doesn't understand how I can bow to the supervisor's whims and take the shit he is capable of throwing at me from time to time. But like yourself and Julie have both stated, unless you are a graduate student yourself, you WILL NOT get it. I think Julie put it best when she stated that was are disposable. It's an incredibley unfortunate fact of graduate student life. We can be let go. There are no laws governing lab politics, unfortunately. I try not to discuss all my lab problems with Mr. S now, as his "helpful" ideas are invitabley not helpful and he gets pissed off about me not trying to take control of the situation. I am trying, it just will never work!!
I started my blog for very simlar reasons. One of my favourite aspects of the online science/PhD community, as I think I have mentioned before, is knowing that we are not alone in this even when we feel that we are. I found my first science-ey blog on a particularly bad day which led to me googling the words "PHD" and "hell" in the hopes of finding someone in a similar situation. And look what I found!
:)
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