Well, my very first paper has been rejected, although I am not really all that surprised. I was re-reading it the other day and thinking that Good General Journal would be foolish for giving it the 'revise and resubmit' stamp. It simply wasn’t good enough. All the issues that the reviewers suggested were lacking I had originally included and Advisor A removed out in her final, somewhat brutal, edit. This is the same paper that Ad A appropriated first authorship. Once I realised that my own work wouldn’t even have my name first, I decided to give up fighting for what I saw as crucial to the paper’s conceptual coherence.
Secretly, I feel vindicated that the paper was given the big fat brush off. Although my smug glow soon wore off when the reality hit. Now I will have to re-write the paper and Ad A will resubmit with her name still tauntingly first.
Although, I guess there is now no reason why I shouldn’t bring up the authorship issue again. But I have to balance it with the fact that I will have to work with this woman for many years to come. This is a moment when I have to take psycgirl’s advice and pick my battles, and the answers to the questions she logically asks all point to the fact that I probably should fight this one.
Sunday, 10 June 2007
Friday, 8 June 2007
The friend zone
[but first a brief preface:
I've been a lazy blogger lately, although I have been writing potential posts in Word I can't publish them. I just kept pondering why I wanted to start this blog, and whether it is relevant, both to myself and any others who stumble across it.
And what is it that I want to write about – do I limit it to talk about grad school only, what about my meagre social life, should that be mentioned? But I realised I couldn’t really separate the two, especially as an increasing amount of my time is spent at uni (and the fact that the majority of my non uni friends have fled the country!). Then there is always the fear that I will be ‘outed’, which means that sometimes I can't be as honest as I would like.
But I find that there is something calming about writing a post and publishing it. Almost like a sensation that now what I have written is ‘out there’ it is no longer solely my own. I have admitted it, and shared it. And it most certainly feels different from simply writing it in a Word document and leaving it on my computer. So I will continue my infrequent postings…]
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Advisor A and I, brought together by the Advisor B debacle, have slipped into something that has sent alarm bells screeching and sirens sounding ‘retreat retreat’ over again in my head. I think we are becoming….friends.
I know that this is a bad bad idea, and that it is a messy way to do a PhD if one is ‘friends’ with ones advisor. But like me, Ad A is relatively new, and I am her first PhD student. In fact, she finished her phd less that four years ago. I just have the feeling that we are both learning as we go along. Now I don’t know whether that is an advantage, in that she is relatively young, and open to new ideas, or whether it is a disadvantage because she has little experience in the role of supervisor, and hasn’t really got an established lab or research team. But I knew all this before, and her research specialty was exciting enough for me to outweigh these possible disadvantages.
But the fact that we have moved steadily away from a professional relationship and into what can only be termed the ‘friend zone’ is alarming me. I am fully aware that it is a fake friendship because there will always be a power differential but I feel that there is little I can do to reign the relationship in. I don’t feel I can exactly say to her ‘Ad A, as much as I am intrigued by your fiancé/mother/best friend, can we please get back to talking about my research’. She would be hurt, and then angry. I know, I’ve tried to steer her back on topic before – she didn’t reply to my emails for two weeks! Where does psychology find these intelligent yet precious academics?
I've been a lazy blogger lately, although I have been writing potential posts in Word I can't publish them. I just kept pondering why I wanted to start this blog, and whether it is relevant, both to myself and any others who stumble across it.
And what is it that I want to write about – do I limit it to talk about grad school only, what about my meagre social life, should that be mentioned? But I realised I couldn’t really separate the two, especially as an increasing amount of my time is spent at uni (and the fact that the majority of my non uni friends have fled the country!). Then there is always the fear that I will be ‘outed’, which means that sometimes I can't be as honest as I would like.
But I find that there is something calming about writing a post and publishing it. Almost like a sensation that now what I have written is ‘out there’ it is no longer solely my own. I have admitted it, and shared it. And it most certainly feels different from simply writing it in a Word document and leaving it on my computer. So I will continue my infrequent postings…]
**************************
Advisor A and I, brought together by the Advisor B debacle, have slipped into something that has sent alarm bells screeching and sirens sounding ‘retreat retreat’ over again in my head. I think we are becoming….friends.
I know that this is a bad bad idea, and that it is a messy way to do a PhD if one is ‘friends’ with ones advisor. But like me, Ad A is relatively new, and I am her first PhD student. In fact, she finished her phd less that four years ago. I just have the feeling that we are both learning as we go along. Now I don’t know whether that is an advantage, in that she is relatively young, and open to new ideas, or whether it is a disadvantage because she has little experience in the role of supervisor, and hasn’t really got an established lab or research team. But I knew all this before, and her research specialty was exciting enough for me to outweigh these possible disadvantages.
But the fact that we have moved steadily away from a professional relationship and into what can only be termed the ‘friend zone’ is alarming me. I am fully aware that it is a fake friendship because there will always be a power differential but I feel that there is little I can do to reign the relationship in. I don’t feel I can exactly say to her ‘Ad A, as much as I am intrigued by your fiancé/mother/best friend, can we please get back to talking about my research’. She would be hurt, and then angry. I know, I’ve tried to steer her back on topic before – she didn’t reply to my emails for two weeks! Where does psychology find these intelligent yet precious academics?
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