So, I "lost" my "job" today...
I'm gonna quote the hell out of this one. For clarity's sake.
I say "lost" because I kinda quit and kinda was told to quit. And also because, assuming I'm losing it, I'm getting a different one, one that I like more. I say "job" because it was a summer research position, which hardly counts as a real job.
I'd been "working" for about a week now. Our research group holds weekly meetings. At last week's meeting, I was given a job to do for the summer. It was basically "build this one thing". It wasn't complicated necessarily, but it wasn't exactly straightforward. And that was all the explanation I was given. For anything, really. There was no "Hey, I want you working these hours" or "When you're working, you have to be working in the lab". Just a vague description of a project.
So, I spent the last week looking online at ways to start my project, as well as reading research papers about the project our group was working on. I did this for probably four hours every weekday, generally at home and occasionally in the physics building computer lab.
Today after our meeting, my advisor asks me to talk to him. He says he expected me to be working in his lab that whole week. I'm not entirely sure why I needed to be there, even now, but apparently it's what he expected. And he goes on to ask me about my future plans. And for the first time in a while, I was completely honest with someone in the department. I told him I was probably just going to get a masters and leave it at that. He says when he offered me the position, it was with the intention that this summer would probably lead to me working with him on my Ph.D. thesis project. He says it's not really fair to him to fund me for a summer that involves training me on the project when I'm not going to be committed to it for a long time. I halfheartedly agree.
We eventually come to the agreement that I should take a summer TA position. At this point, I'd rather be doing that anyway, even though I'll get paid less for it.
On the one hand, I'm a little bitter about the lack of guidance that I got. On the other hand, I know I'm far from blameless. I wasn't trying to shirk my obligations, but I was fairly aware that he was probably expecting more from me. The main thing was just that I needed a break and he left the door open for me to kinda take one.
In any case, now I have a job for 8 weeks of the summer. I think it should give me some more free time than I was expecting.
And I think I have tomorrow off.
I say "lost" because I kinda quit and kinda was told to quit. And also because, assuming I'm losing it, I'm getting a different one, one that I like more. I say "job" because it was a summer research position, which hardly counts as a real job.
I'd been "working" for about a week now. Our research group holds weekly meetings. At last week's meeting, I was given a job to do for the summer. It was basically "build this one thing". It wasn't complicated necessarily, but it wasn't exactly straightforward. And that was all the explanation I was given. For anything, really. There was no "Hey, I want you working these hours" or "When you're working, you have to be working in the lab". Just a vague description of a project.
So, I spent the last week looking online at ways to start my project, as well as reading research papers about the project our group was working on. I did this for probably four hours every weekday, generally at home and occasionally in the physics building computer lab.
Today after our meeting, my advisor asks me to talk to him. He says he expected me to be working in his lab that whole week. I'm not entirely sure why I needed to be there, even now, but apparently it's what he expected. And he goes on to ask me about my future plans. And for the first time in a while, I was completely honest with someone in the department. I told him I was probably just going to get a masters and leave it at that. He says when he offered me the position, it was with the intention that this summer would probably lead to me working with him on my Ph.D. thesis project. He says it's not really fair to him to fund me for a summer that involves training me on the project when I'm not going to be committed to it for a long time. I halfheartedly agree.
We eventually come to the agreement that I should take a summer TA position. At this point, I'd rather be doing that anyway, even though I'll get paid less for it.
On the one hand, I'm a little bitter about the lack of guidance that I got. On the other hand, I know I'm far from blameless. I wasn't trying to shirk my obligations, but I was fairly aware that he was probably expecting more from me. The main thing was just that I needed a break and he left the door open for me to kinda take one.
In any case, now I have a job for 8 weeks of the summer. I think it should give me some more free time than I was expecting.
And I think I have tomorrow off.
posted by Mike at
9:36 PM
2 Comments:
That is both sucky and good at the same time. Silver lining and all that.
Do you read phdcomics.com? If you don't, you should. I love it and it's mostly about sciencey types, so you might even better get it!
By
Allison, at 11:40 PM
like this: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=867
By
Allison, at 11:41 PM
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