My PI's lack of competence wasn't the only reason I resigned my postdoc. It was how she treated everyone as being beneath her. So she'd get irritated and frustrated with people who she thought was stupid. Unfortunately, she's got no right to think of others that way, because she couldn't do a single experiment herself. She didn't know how to do statistics, graph anything on excel, a dissection or subclone anything.
She micromanaged everything to the point where it becomes unproductive and dysfunctional. But the part that made me resign? Her constant yelling and disapproval... complaining about lab members to everyone except the person concerned.
When she was having issues with her graduate student, she wanted me to talk to her. In my mind I thought, 'Isn't that YOUR job?' I frankly didn't want to get involved. I told her to give the graduate student a chance. She just needs to figure out how to navigate through grad school. We all needed time to adapt. But then over the months, she'd always complain to me. You might have thought she was just venting, but this wasn't just about venting. It was getting malicious. She would say it's her boyfriend.... he's a bad influence. I'd just remark and say, 'I don't know her boyfriend well enough to make judgements'. It was starting to get unprofessional.
She was very quick to pass judgement. It was only a matter of time before her attention turned to me and things became ugly for me. So I gave up trying when I realized that I was dealing with a very petty and immature woman. No matter how hard I worked, I would never succeed in her eyes. Her condescending attitude was too much for me to handle. I lost all my confidence in the process. I something sit and wonder how I managed to screw things up so badly. Where did it go wrong? Or did it go wrong at all? I worked my ass off and submitted my paper in the J. of Neuroscience which is a pretty good journal. The reviews were positive and only asked for minor revisions. It's not too bad, especially when you consider that it was 2 years worth of work, in an entirely new field.
As far as I know, I am the first of my PhD-classmates to publish during the postdoc. Some still haven't even managed to publish their first author papers from grad school. So, surely I've been doing something right and her anger and frustration at me is a little unwarranted. It doesn't matter now anyway. I'm leaving...
She micromanaged everything to the point where it becomes unproductive and dysfunctional. But the part that made me resign? Her constant yelling and disapproval... complaining about lab members to everyone except the person concerned.
When she was having issues with her graduate student, she wanted me to talk to her. In my mind I thought, 'Isn't that YOUR job?' I frankly didn't want to get involved. I told her to give the graduate student a chance. She just needs to figure out how to navigate through grad school. We all needed time to adapt. But then over the months, she'd always complain to me. You might have thought she was just venting, but this wasn't just about venting. It was getting malicious. She would say it's her boyfriend.... he's a bad influence. I'd just remark and say, 'I don't know her boyfriend well enough to make judgements'. It was starting to get unprofessional.
She was very quick to pass judgement. It was only a matter of time before her attention turned to me and things became ugly for me. So I gave up trying when I realized that I was dealing with a very petty and immature woman. No matter how hard I worked, I would never succeed in her eyes. Her condescending attitude was too much for me to handle. I lost all my confidence in the process. I something sit and wonder how I managed to screw things up so badly. Where did it go wrong? Or did it go wrong at all? I worked my ass off and submitted my paper in the J. of Neuroscience which is a pretty good journal. The reviews were positive and only asked for minor revisions. It's not too bad, especially when you consider that it was 2 years worth of work, in an entirely new field.
As far as I know, I am the first of my PhD-classmates to publish during the postdoc. Some still haven't even managed to publish their first author papers from grad school. So, surely I've been doing something right and her anger and frustration at me is a little unwarranted. It doesn't matter now anyway. I'm leaving...
You were not alone in the situation. I found myself to be in a very similar situation as you well. Hope you are more happy at your current position.
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