Hello to the people that come across this blog. I had the intention of doing regular updates on this blog about my experiences through the major parts of graduate school. However, I am now entering my third year and I have yet to publish every major thing that happened in my first year. This post here is an apology for not keeping up in case you wanted to read more and it is about to devolve into a rant about my PI.
The PI (Principal Investigator) that I work for is a micromanager. He watches the work we do like a hawk and plays favorites to other students. Our lab is divided between two disciplines and our PI will give preference to his native discipline (which I am not a part of) which frustrates those students in the other half of the lab. I do not even know if he realizes that he plays favorites, but he does. Additionally he will not be straightforward with us students. If he would just tell us why he does certain things, even if that means telling us he doesn't like doing the research that half the lab does, then he should still us.
It also doesn't help that my PI likes to try be our friend instead of our boss, but he will suddenly flip to being a boss. As graduate students, yes we like to go out and have a few drinks and it is totally acceptable for the boss to come along and have a couple every now and then. However, our boss gets upset when we don't invite him out. He also occupies a desk in the same space as his graduate students even though he has an office, it is just in another building on campus. There are reasons that bosses have an office separate from their employees, but our PI doesn't seem to realize that.
This rant is over for now, I am sure more will happen that will cause another rant again eventually. I am sure the majority of graduate students will have frustrations with their PIs at some point during graduate school, but when you can't confront your PI about it, that is when graduate school becomes its stereotypic hell. If you are a graduate student reading this, I bet you have had frustrations at some point, and if you are considering graduate school when reading this, don't be deterred. Everyone you talk to about graduate school will have stories of something their PI did that pissed them off. It is how you become part of the club.
