The first time I sent my dissertation to my PI he told me he didn't really read it because it was too short (and I had uncharitable thoughts about the cause behind the academia being too full of people who love the sound of their own voices too much). The second time I sent my dissertation, having now written a lot more speculations and peripherally related information than I am strictly comfortable with I got back nothing and...nothing. Finally I ran out of patience and asked him if he's read it yet. He said no, very matter of fact, and informed me that he would not read it until I finish my experiments. I pointed out to him that my defense date is scheduled for August. He smiled at me and told me I "better get cracking".


Then we had an argument about what should be the central point of my dissertation. As the readers may recall, he wanted to change the entire focus of my research around...oh last year, when I got a result for one of my experiments that made him very, very excited and had him convinced that I can bump up the tier of journal that I published in. He's still very fixated on that, as the new experiments he's proposing seems to suggest. He's fixated to the point that during this latest iteration of our disagreement he essentially that everything I've done up to that point, last year, was unimportant.

That day I cried for an hour after I went home because I needed an outlet for all that stress and frustration. I have a hypothesis, formed based on my observation, that the PI, because he's a procrastinator, treats everyone like they're procrastinators too. Which meant he expect the normal amount of work that we put in to be baseline and that when the deadline looms and he asserts a bit of pressure we'd be able to double my output. I'm not entirely sure he realizes that people like me, who like to turn in all their work at least 24hours ahead of the deadline, exists. I always work as efficiently as I can -- I take pride in it -- and the pressure that he exerts has no effect except to make me more stressed and burned out and HIM more stressed because my productivity does not increase in a matter that he's used to.

(Examples: He's been making noises about writing a grant for my project since 4 years ago and he just wrote it these past few months. He's also currently sitting on 3 manuscripts, one belonging to a post-doc who's already left, and rather than working on any of the 3 he's thinking of drafting another one based on what the lab tech's been working on.)

Alas.

Also my mother sent me an email asking if she could come stay with me for a few days at the start of July to see how I live and to make amends for the past. Although I'm happy that we've reach this part of our relationship, I really cannot deal with her now sharing the same 100sq feet with me for days even if I'm gone for 12hours at a time. I told her no, which is the right choice, but still nevertheless makes me feel like a terrible daughter.

I did, however, get in touch with someone from the Berkeley herbarium (like a library, but with dried plants instead of books) so I have a volunteer position (unpaid) waiting for me when I finally take my few months off, to get trained on working in an herbarium, so that I can get a job working in herbaria later because right now-- at the current rate-- I am far to burned out to consider working in research within a year after graduating, which will be obvious during interviews because I never could quite get the hang of faking enthusiasm. Also my shoulder still hurts, so a break into a job that doesn't involve me holding my arm at a precise angles for 30mins at a stretch would be lovely.

This has been my week.