I have two labmates who I am starting to hate. It isn't anything they have done. It is just that everything is so much easier for them. They have no student debt, they don't have outside jobs, they are never flat-out broke. I have to work a 40hr/wk job plus my research plus maintain a half dozen of legacy systems other graduates students hacked together and dumped when they graduated. Every paper they submit gets accepted and because the only thing they have to do is their research they can do more than I could even imagine. I hate it when one of them goes on about how poor judgement conferences have when they accept his fluff papers with no implementation while I am getting my 4th and 5th submission rejects this year (despite the last two having all good reviews). I'm seriously thinking about taking a full time programming job half the country away so I can dump all the miscellaneous crap that gets dumped on me. And then at least my non-work hours aren't being wasted on fixing other peoples problems.

Last week one of them had the gall to suggest that since I was doing something remotely similar to something he needed to do that I should do it for him while I was doing it for me. What the hell?!?

The other one meanwhile actually has a professorship already and has been too busy over the last year and a half being a professor to finish his Ph.D.

I'm starting to think that I'm never going to get the PhD and even if I will, I won't be able to churn out enough fluff to be successful as a faculty. I really don't want to be stuck in some programmer position after burning 6 years of my life.

Hi Plbogen, all I can do is tell you I feel very similarly about a group of superior, cliquey, funded stuents at my department who just have to do their research and a bit of teaching, no real money worries, while I struggle and worry over pennies, and teach 12 plus hours per week, at two different unis, and then work supply in schools.

Perhaps the programming job could work for you, if it means you really will have free time: you can travel to see your sup, that's what I do, and it's not great, but it sounds as if the pressure at your place is pretty overwhelming.

Good luck