I didn't post the full quote / discussion that happened yesterday, or why it made me so upset. It's actually kind of ridiculous and in, one sense, I suppose I brought it on myself. On the other hand, I seriously was not expecting focusing on facts would be an issue, as a junior scientist.
Warning for long post and emotions all over the place.
The comment, in full, was that though it was something that he (the professor, to the head nodding of two other professors next to him) "rarely" says to graduate students, he wanted to tell me that I'm too rational, and that I need to think more imaginatively. That scientists think on a continuum, where too imaginative means coming up with all kinds of crazy experiments / ideas that can't ever be carried out, and too rational, in my case, being focusing solely on facts and overly emphasizing on practicality. I didn't theorize. Didn't imagine the different possibilities where I had no data. Needless to say, it's good to be more in the middle of this spectrum.
On one hand, hey look, I'm kind of a weird outlier of a student, again.
On the other hand, being told that you're too focused on practicality, as an aspiring researcher, is, I imagine, like being an aspiring musician and being told you're too clinical, because the great scientists are visionaries, they can look at the facts and see something else that no one else sees -- they can put together data in novel and interesting ways and see the bigger picture. Someone who has no imagination cannot do that. Someone who has no imagination, it's implied in the field, is more suited to be a lab tech than a researcher.
I was upset.
To be honest, I was crushed. The first thing I did when I got home and locked the door is to sob in fury for five minutes because seriously, what the hell. (And then I had to laugh at myself because that was actually very melodramatic and I couldn't take myself seriously if that's my emotional response.) I had enough frustration built up that drawing alone couldn't even deal with it -- it was either tears or violence and tears seemed less destructive. And then I was disappointed by TV and had to chase a beetle out of my room so last night, was almost a total wash. The only thing that didn't fail me, it felt like, was tea.
Would it be strange of me to declare my undying love for tea? Well, I'm strange anyway, so what the hell.
I makes me think of Rosalind Franklin -- Watson and Crick played around to molecule models and figured out the structure to DNA, but they had ZERO experimental data. Franklin had the data they needed to solve it -- which they saw without her permission due to the mess of lab politics and her professor holding a grudge -- and Franklin didn't try to solve the structure because she didn't want to theorize before she had all the data. Which was roughly what half of science was like in the early 1900s but these days the push is all for theories. Although Franklin was a role model of sorts (Barbara McClintock is my other favorite female scientist, in case anyone's wondering), this is getting a bit too far. I don't want to be the "almost" girl.
It was a moment in the grad student career that I'd heard about, where you have two options: either to give up, or keep going.
So that's what I meant when I said that I've lied: I'm not giving up.
In a sense it's hysterically funny because the people who know me also know that I draw and come up with stories and built worlds in my dreams in my spare time, and I've actually put not inconsiderable effort to separate that part of me from the work-in-lab part of me, to cut down on the absent-minded daydreams and to have more focus. What I apparently needed was some of that creativity to bleed through to influence my scientific thinking, but nothing else that would distract me from my experiments. (I tried no separation during one lab rotation and end up being so distracted that I either forgot what I was writing or forgot my samples. It just does not work.) I'm not an inherently unimaginative person. I am not uncreative. It's just channeling that's going to take some work.
Also? I know for a fact that I am not the worst. Despite of the stings of failure there are project scientists I've met who made me think "Seriously? How did they manage to make it this far?" I have failed to meet the standard of one (senior) professor? Fine. I'd love to be able to meet the expectations of everyone. I'm fairly competitive when it comes to this, because science is something I'm good at. I love meeting and exceeding people's expectations. But if I can't? Now with the benefit of just 24 hours of hindsight, I can shrug and say "Oh well." These are the things that professor can't take away: my science is rigorous. The analysis is both thorough and correct, which is more than many of the over-theorized publications with shoddy data can say. I can predict the questions and experiments my professor will suggest 25-50% of the time. I can think and imagine. On the right tracks even. The fact that I did not excel, according to that professor, does not change the fact that as far as grad students go, I'm a fairly competent one.
Finally, a far less noble reason: spite. One last chance to exceed expectations via the "screw you, I succeeded anyway" method. I have done this before, when frustrated and upset, I defied what people thought was my failing and came through anyway, sometimes purely out of sheer stubborn refusal to give up. Mostly it's just a more useful way to deal with frustration and vindictiveness because hey, I'm a busy girl with limited time and energy, if I'm going to get frustrated and angry I might as well as get the most out of it right? It's constructive spite. (And thank goodness my natural caution can keep this in check most of the time because otherwise the trouble I'd be in, oh my God.)
So yeah, in conclusion: presentation sucked. That professor sucks. I was upset. I am now vindictive and ...plotty, but I'll keep on fighting another year, rah rah and all that. And there will be tea, cheers.
...........................
I know, I know, that there are other graduate students out there who had gone through various things that discouraged them in grad school, be it professors or experiments or something else. I even know people who did quit and drop out of grad school. So I'm just throwing this out there to the internet: here's what I'd gone through, if it's helpful to you at all, in anyway, then the hour I just spent in typing up this would have been worth it.
(Oh God I just spent an hour with all these FEELINGS and now I'm posting them. Grad school had definitely made me crazier.)
