of who I want to become
Ok, if you are reading this without having read my previous post, you need to read the previous one before you read this.
A mini-crisis has struck my workplace. My professor has 3 research grants, and one of them is from NIH (for the uninformed, NIH is the nation's highest authority in research and generates most medical/biological research work and funding). She has this habit of telling people that she "has the money to do the research she wants", which is fair enough because she's just an assistant professor, so it's kinda prestigious for her to get the best type of NIH grant (even within NIH, there are diff kind of grants and the best one gives the most money and most autonomy, but it's also the hardest to get). However, life has a way of putting us where we belong when we forget.
The Jewish bitch (the lab's nickname for her; it's kinda harsh but if you read on you probably will emphatize a little with our situation) ran out of money! It seems that my boss had too many ideas and she always jumped from idea to idea. I mean, they were all brilliant ideas, just that whenever results don't turn out as she expects them to, she loses her attention and happily skips on to another idea. All of us in the lab are managing multiple projects which start and end according to her whim and fancy. Over the 2 semester that I have been working for her, I have spent more than 10K already (And imagine: my projects are the easiest and cheapest ones). It seems that her dunnoe-how-many-hundred-thousand-dollars-grant got depleted by, get this: MICE!
Yes, Miss Klein had too many mice (you are charged per cage per day) and was running bills of 5K a mth JUST for keeping mice alive in the medical facilities. Can you believe that? And then expensive pure breeds of mice were bought. Transgenic mice were bought (one mouse costs 1K. I can't even understand why. I mean, yeah, i know transgenic work is tough. But 1K?). Massive numbers of knock-out mice colonies were bred. Mating pairs performed. Blah blah blah. (did i say that ms klein has ambitiously overhired people and has a lab of like 10 people which isn't common for an asst prof at all)
So Miss Klein declares an emergency in the lab and we have been banned from buying new stuff such as chemicals for 1 week because April 1 marks the start of a NEW financial year and suddenly she will be the rich bitch she once was again. I found the whole thing hilarious. Hilarious because it was her fault (for nto watching the funds and for asking so much out of everyone in terms of the projects we were doing; there was a day that I killed like ONE HUNDRED mice. Can anyone emphatize with that?) and hilarious only because the money was gonna come back a week later.
Well, wrong wrong wrong.
Q confided in me the other day. Actually, she's a post-doctoral doctor and she divorced her husband in China to bring her son to America. The project she has been working on is coming to an end and the Jewish bitch was gonna give first authorship to a graduate student when it's Q's work all the while! The conversation just got too emotional when she kept saying that the only reason why she's working here is because of her son. And then it went on tangents and I realized how hard things have been for her: it's hard to please this kind of boss while you are trying to make money to buy Abercrombie shirts that cost a bomb for your son because it's a "disgrace" to wear clothings from Walmart in america. Talk about the difficulties of getting a green card man.
And then Judy cried and hugged me the other day. Miss Klein told her that the deficit is DUE to Judy because she's the lab officer and lab officers should manage budgets (which is completely skewed since lab officers make sure bills are PAID, not which bills can be paid). Miss Klein retracted her employee evaluation and is gonna give her a "new" one. Just a small thing to add: Judy cried because she wanted to quit but needed to stay for another year because that would give her 10 years of work in the medical school and hence free medical insurance and retirement pension (she's divorced and living alone. Her only daughter is in Houston.)
And then Angie (my favorite latina Phd student) was called in Miss Klein's office: "I don't know why you achieved so little. Whether it's because u are lazy, bored, or simply uninterested? Sorry, your grade is going to be bad." Oh well, I don't know how on earth she can find a next lab to rotate in with this kind of recommendation letter from Miss Klein.
So on and forth. It turns out that I got the best deal among there: just a 2 for "dependability" and no daily scoldings.
I have learned a lot in the past few days and these are lessons that I won't forget.
A mini-crisis has struck my workplace. My professor has 3 research grants, and one of them is from NIH (for the uninformed, NIH is the nation's highest authority in research and generates most medical/biological research work and funding). She has this habit of telling people that she "has the money to do the research she wants", which is fair enough because she's just an assistant professor, so it's kinda prestigious for her to get the best type of NIH grant (even within NIH, there are diff kind of grants and the best one gives the most money and most autonomy, but it's also the hardest to get). However, life has a way of putting us where we belong when we forget.
The Jewish bitch (the lab's nickname for her; it's kinda harsh but if you read on you probably will emphatize a little with our situation) ran out of money! It seems that my boss had too many ideas and she always jumped from idea to idea. I mean, they were all brilliant ideas, just that whenever results don't turn out as she expects them to, she loses her attention and happily skips on to another idea. All of us in the lab are managing multiple projects which start and end according to her whim and fancy. Over the 2 semester that I have been working for her, I have spent more than 10K already (And imagine: my projects are the easiest and cheapest ones). It seems that her dunnoe-how-many-hundred-thousand-dollars-grant got depleted by, get this: MICE!
Yes, Miss Klein had too many mice (you are charged per cage per day) and was running bills of 5K a mth JUST for keeping mice alive in the medical facilities. Can you believe that? And then expensive pure breeds of mice were bought. Transgenic mice were bought (one mouse costs 1K. I can't even understand why. I mean, yeah, i know transgenic work is tough. But 1K?). Massive numbers of knock-out mice colonies were bred. Mating pairs performed. Blah blah blah. (did i say that ms klein has ambitiously overhired people and has a lab of like 10 people which isn't common for an asst prof at all)
So Miss Klein declares an emergency in the lab and we have been banned from buying new stuff such as chemicals for 1 week because April 1 marks the start of a NEW financial year and suddenly she will be the rich bitch she once was again. I found the whole thing hilarious. Hilarious because it was her fault (for nto watching the funds and for asking so much out of everyone in terms of the projects we were doing; there was a day that I killed like ONE HUNDRED mice. Can anyone emphatize with that?) and hilarious only because the money was gonna come back a week later.
Well, wrong wrong wrong.
Q confided in me the other day. Actually, she's a post-doctoral doctor and she divorced her husband in China to bring her son to America. The project she has been working on is coming to an end and the Jewish bitch was gonna give first authorship to a graduate student when it's Q's work all the while! The conversation just got too emotional when she kept saying that the only reason why she's working here is because of her son. And then it went on tangents and I realized how hard things have been for her: it's hard to please this kind of boss while you are trying to make money to buy Abercrombie shirts that cost a bomb for your son because it's a "disgrace" to wear clothings from Walmart in america. Talk about the difficulties of getting a green card man.
And then Judy cried and hugged me the other day. Miss Klein told her that the deficit is DUE to Judy because she's the lab officer and lab officers should manage budgets (which is completely skewed since lab officers make sure bills are PAID, not which bills can be paid). Miss Klein retracted her employee evaluation and is gonna give her a "new" one. Just a small thing to add: Judy cried because she wanted to quit but needed to stay for another year because that would give her 10 years of work in the medical school and hence free medical insurance and retirement pension (she's divorced and living alone. Her only daughter is in Houston.)
And then Angie (my favorite latina Phd student) was called in Miss Klein's office: "I don't know why you achieved so little. Whether it's because u are lazy, bored, or simply uninterested? Sorry, your grade is going to be bad." Oh well, I don't know how on earth she can find a next lab to rotate in with this kind of recommendation letter from Miss Klein.
So on and forth. It turns out that I got the best deal among there: just a 2 for "dependability" and no daily scoldings.
I have learned a lot in the past few days and these are lessons that I won't forget.
XXX
I really want to be a better person, and a real person. That's why I take philosophy, dabble in anthropology, and try to learn another language. I don't want to be contented with the current situation because I am honestly lacking in too much. I really want to do more and the past week's experiences with people from all walks of life have shaken me a little out of my comfort zone and face up to life. I want to meet diffrent people of different cultural backgrounds. I want to be more than just a student because going to school doesn't mean much to me. I want to touch the lives of people because everyone has a story to tell and deserved to be listened to.
I really want to be a better person.
XXX
Just before I left work today, I told Q and Judy that it was actually my birthday. Not that I really celebrate it anyway. I mean, it was a little shocking to receive an iPod out of nowhere, and then a surprise dinner and other stuff etc, but these don't really mean anything to me. I just told them because these are 2 frens that are meaningful to me in a special way after some time (although the age gap is kinda big, haha). Judy gave me a big hug and Q wanted to buy food and deliver it to my place at nite. It was all very touching.
And no, Q didn't deliver the food at night eventually but I thought that was probably my best birthday gift this year because I knew that she meant it and our kind of friendship is the kind the runs deep but appears like a shallow ripple off the pond.
Isn't that beautiful?
posted by smartypants at 11:59 PM
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