======= Date Modified 25 Sep 2012 14:04:18 =======
======= Date Modified 25 Sep 2012 11:41:36 =======
I was getting on OK in my first year when my supervisor had me work alongside someone who had just finished their PhD (not yet submitted) in a different dept -lets call her X. It became clear very quickly that X had only taken on the postdoc position offered by my supervisor as she wanted a bit of funding while she was finishing up her PhD and writing up. Without going into too many details, she did her best to avoid taking the blame for her lack of interest and work by blaming problems on me, ruining my relationships with other people in the lab, refusing to train me up on anything so I was always dependent on her, and ultimately just "vanishing" for long period of time when she was supposed to be working with samples I had painstakingly prepared. I tried to bring this up with my supervisor but got told we "depended on her for data as she was the only one who could use the technology, and there was very little time left for her to leave" and had to be "as nice as possible or there was a chance she could totally disengage from the work and then we would have nothing", and "I know its a pain but what can we do, we just need to grit our teeth and get on with it"


As a result, the paper we were working on is now unlikely to go through as we don't have good data, and she is leaving in a week (leaving academia altogether so doesn't care about references and so on). I feel like a lot of good work I did is going to come to nothing. My supervisor now wants to steer my project in a slightly different direction, so I have no idea what's going to happen to the samples I have already prepared. X herself is impossible to communicate with (doesn't respond to emails, becomes hostile when asked too many questions) and my supervisor seems to want me to just put it behind me and move on. Other people in the lab are wary of discussing the situation due to the awful dramas X has put us through already. I haven't gone into the lab for a couple of weeks now and frankly cannot bear the idea of going back in, though I know I have to. I've also been wondering if I've handled the situation badly and if there was something I could have done better, and whether my people skills are absolutely rubbish!