Crabby Old Bitty

Once in a while I get into these moods where I get all cranky about my lab mates. I usually wrap up my rants by confessing an obsessive fear that I’m going to end up a stereotypical bitchy female scientist. Guess what folks? It’s that time again!

Okay. Here goes. It is just about 10:00 here and I am the only person in the lab. I wake up every morning at 6:30 to work out, and then I get ready and get into the lab around 9:00 or 9:15. I’m ALWAYS the first grad student here. Inevitably people start wandering in about 10:30 or 11:00 complaining about how tired they are and how it is such a struggle to get here so flippin early in the morning. Today we have a nobel laureate visiting the lab at 3:00. One of the grad students who I’m not particularly fond of thought it was yesterday and came flying in the door at 3:15 and then got all upset that he had “rushed here” to make it by 3:00. I went off on him.

I know I sound extremely grizzled when I bring this up, but it just seems like the newer grad students in my lab spend all their time whining about how busy they are. How they can’t have a life outside this place. How so much is expected of them. I’m sorry, is grad school supposed to be easy? We all go through the same thing. Your first year you take three classes and teach three classes. You have little time for research but you can pretty much count on being here 8-10 hours a day. And you can forget about a life.

My lab mates and I have the best advisor ever. I’m not kidding. His only requirement is that when we have liquid helium in stock with which to run our giant magnet we keep experiments going around the clock. Since we have several experiments that can be left alone for 8 hours or more, this requirement isn’t unreasonable. Other than that, he never complains when people don’t get here early in the morning or stay late. He never complains when I take off for a few days when my parents are in town or when I go to Minneapolis a couple times a year. He will pull people aside when he doesn’t see enough productivity, but other than that he leaves us alone. I follow a structured regimen because I am 26 and one of these days when I have a grown up job I know it will be required of me. The sooner I get used to that, the better. Sure, once in a while I sleep in and roll into work at 11:00 and it feels good. But I just think doing it everyday takes advantage of our easy going boss. Any other boss in the department and in all departments around the country would expect much more than our advisor is getting.

I know in my heart that people reap what they sow. I will be a better scientist for having the discipline to work long hours when I could get away with less. I’ll get my PhD in a timely manner and get a good job. But in the present I can’t help feeling snarky about it.

Now comes the part where I worry about being a bitchy female physicist. To detour a minute, I read an interesting article about a phenomenon where people become so afraid of fulfilling a certain stereotype that it affects their performance. I can’t remember what it’s called. Something about threatened stereotyping I think. I’m pretty sure I suffer from that. I suffer from being a cranky old bitty who is destined to rub it in how easy people have it and I’m pretty sure I’ll bust out with “Oh yeah? Well when I went to the University of Minnesota I walked six blocks to campus everyday. Sometimes through the snow and in below zero temperatures.” I’ll spare them from the assertion that it was uphill both ways.