Hello everyone!

I’m a PhD student and over these years I’ve enjoyed investigating my projects very much! So far I’ve developed my three projects quite independently – intellectually, experimentally and writing my manuscripts. My PI has been great, leaving me completely free to explore. I’ve got a couple of collaborators but I’ve directed everything so there has not been any actual discussion with them. In addition to this, I often love to work in the night when there is just me and science! That said, recently I’ve received feedback about working too much on my own and not socialising enough. I’ve to admit that I’m quite nerd and I speak with colleagues just when I feel anxious for something and so I feel like uttering words. I do not talk about my own experiments and the biological questions that ‘burn inside’, neither I tend to ask about their projects because I’m fully immersed into my own research where I can have fun by freely leading the investigation following my reasoning and curiosity!

I’ve got clear ideas on what I would like to do in the coming years, but I’ve been warned that this not very interactive attitude might affect my future. So I’m currently working on strengthening this side by increasing the number of collaborations and being helpful to others projects.

I think it’s good ‘to hear different bells’, so I was wondering if you also have worked independently during your PhD in a nerdy way and if this can actually have a negative impact on the next steps in the world of academia?

Thank you in advance for sharing your experiences/advice.

- Cherry on the top: she is even more sneaky because beyond all this she constantly plays the part of the ‘innocent victim’ IN EVERY SITUATION. She is extremely diplomatic. Observing her behavior along these 2 years she made me realize that you can do science not only by your curiosity/questions/study/thinking & hard work, but also by just being diplomatic! That’s pretty amazing, I’ve to admit that she definitely has this ‘skill’! Probably the only skill she has, indeed in my lab we are all aware that she is totally lacking of any personal thinking/judgment, she basically just repeats what she heard from someone else, thus pretending to think. She carries out passively like a technician (note: I don’t want to offend technicians by comparing her to them) whatever her collaborators/colleagues/my PI tell her to do. Just to give you an idea of her intellectual involvement, once another PhD student of my lab who is a friend of mine told me that she was present at this unbelievable scene: the PI-collaborator of this sneaky student asked her (after 2 years since ‘her’ project had started) which was the biological question of ‘her’ project and she could not answer (!)…basically she didn’t even know why she was doing what she was doing!

I don’t know how to deal with this person, I mean I try to avoid her as much as possible, but the truth is that we live in the same square meter and we need to share information/reagents for work reasons. So I'm not reacting to her mobbing activities and sly behavior and just ‘accepting’ it, only focusing on Science. In addition to all this, she also did an expt based on some of my findings so she will have to credit me and this represents one additional reason to try hard to ‘stay professional’.

Did you ever have to deal with a sly and mean colleague?
Any advice are very welcome. Feeling already better after writing.
Thank you,
E.

- Another example of slyness that traumatized me is the following: during the revision of ‘her’ paper she told me in an unusual moment of frankness that she would have used a certain pharmacological reagent rather than another one just to obtain the answer that she wanted (!!!!!!) And she didn’t phrase it like this at all to the two supervisors of the project! Basically she just took advantage of their lack of knowledge on this specific topic (which is my topic) to ‘target her answer’ (!!! Unbelievable, is this Science???)
- Third example (but I could go on forever): once she also traumatized me by saying about one common friend: ‘Of course I want his paper to be well-published, because there is my name on it’ O-MY-GOD.

Hi Everyone,
I’m second year PhD student and I’m writing to ask your opinion about how to manage this situation.
I’m super happy with my PhD projects, my PI is very nice/open-minded, and I work in an overall nice environment, aside from ONE colleague. I personally don’t like wasting time thinking of the sly behavior of this empty person, and I rather prefer to focus on my scientific interests, but today I will make an exception because she really stressed me out this week, so I will dedicate 10 min of my life to her by writing this post so that it could help me to calm me down.
So, this PhD student in my lab is extremely sneaky, sly and mean. I will make some examples to let you ‘taste’ which kind of person I’ve to deal with and see if you have any advice.

- First of all, apparently one of her favorite activities is to go around saying to colleagues things not true that (she claims) a person X (e.g. myself) has said about them behind their back. One trend that I noticed is that what she says is usually something that could be useful to herself and at the same time put the other person in a bad position. In this way she is creating a shitty environment and is trying to put the person of interest against the other one (this is her 'constitutive behaviour' indeed she does it a bit with everyone but unluckily I’m her 'favorite target'). Her behavior reminded me the Latin ‘Dividi et impera’ (Divide and conquer).

also I really appreciate that he leaves me free to explore, have my own hypotheses, take decisions on my own and to carry out all the expts that I want. However on the other hand I'm sure that if I could get him involved in my projects he could enhance them with his experience and insightfulness! Any advice?
Thanks!
E.

Hello everyone!
Basically I’m second year PhD and I got some cool findings: 2 years of experiments so far exploring a certain mechanism + a genome-wide killer experiment + just yesterday night I got a further strong outcome that supports my results obtained so far!! (exciting!!)
Nevertheless, my PI doesn’t seem to be interested in my projects! To try to involve him recently I’m kind of asking him questions (although most of the times I’ve already planned what to do) but to me he seems not interested!
First of all, I love my PI because he is passionate like me therefore I’d like very much to share my findings/interests with him. Secondly, I’m worried that his lack of interest might underrate my work. I don’t have lots of experience but I think that my data are very interesting and have a potential. Consistently, three PIs big experts of the field went quite crazy for my project at a conference that I attended and also my best scientist-friend who was in my same lab and who I respect very much he recently said that I could submit both my projects to two extremely good journals respectively (I don’t mention the names that he said because it brings bad luck! but they were both ‘single-word-title’ journals). Therefore I really don’t want my hard work and interesting findings to be underrated.
So I’m a bit worried for this, in addition I don’t think my PI considers me so much because for example he asked me to write a review and I would have loved to do it but then he sadly changed his mind. Then broadly speaking I see him entrusting the others with tasks so I feel how if he doesn’t respect me? By the way I’m very happy with my projects so this is well compensated by the excitement I get from my research and

Well, speaking from my little experience I think that if you study and keep updated every single day about your research and keep your mind opened + you are extremely rigorous, focused and dedicated + you investigate a certain question using several different techniques and you find consistent results + your results are consistent with what is in literature + you get feedback at conferences/from experienced people, well I think that in that case your boss can also be mostly hands-off. Of course, it’s great to have feedback from your boss too, but if he is busy like in your case then there is still plenty of things that you can do.
In my opinion, the beauty of the PhD is being independent intellectually and free to explore. If you have “lost” passion just because your boss is busy and he is hands-off maybe you have just discovered that you actually are not passioned/interested enough.
When it happened that I have had problems in the past I’ve always asked my PI first and he can give me suggestions but then in the end it’s your motivation that allows you to persevere and think of solutions.
In summary, in my opinion if you are motivated and if you get feedback from different sources (e.g. literature, experienced people, using at least two different methods to answer a certain question) you can compensate the “absence” of your busy PI and, at the same time, safely enjoy the precious freedom that he gives you.
But, again, that’s just my little opinion! :)
E.

Hello,

I think you are not appreciating the positive side of all this: it’s much more fun working with a supervisor who is totally hands-off because he leaves you completely free to explore what you want and to think your own hypotheses! Figuring out problems on your own is part of the game, you can see it as the price to pay for freedom/fun! I personally find reading papers very useful to keep my mind opened.

Concerning the high profile journal, could you maybe chat with someone experienced in your lab as someone already suggested? I personally use a post doc in my lab as a sort of “potential reviewer” just to double-check that the experimental design of the future experiments that I have thought is the strongest possible so in this way you can aim to a very good journal.

Good luck!!

E.

By the way guys, just to conclude, I don't think I was mean speaking to my PI also because this mistake that he made is just the cherry on the top: this post doc is completely disorganized. Today he was driving me crazy. Christ, I plan everything and I'm paranoid about everything, indeed I need to have everything under control when I do experiments. I need to have my things planned by time and well organized, in this way I can keep all the parameters constant reducing ideally to zero any potential variation between one replicate and the other and I also neither forget stuff nor make mistakes. There is just me, my thoughts and my experiment, maximal concentration, I enjoy what I do, it's a sort of "ecstasy".
Instead he does things at the last minutes (even if the previous 60 min he's not doing other experiements so he's not justified) in a rush which I believe increases the probability to make stupid mistakes and indeed today I stopped him on time from making another mistake! He's so messy.
Maybe you're right I'm not flexible and what I did was not obljectively nice, but I think that experiments are very "personal" and that I work well alone and he's a living mess!

Agree on the first sentence Treeoflife!
No I've never been interested to resemble the others, I don't think I will start now :P
Thanks!

I waited one week before updating him! Then I thought that updating my PI doesn't mean only to show the new results but also to update about spotted problems, which is equally important for the projects to proceed. Moreover even if he's very busy he spends his time to guide me and give me feedback so I think it's important and helpful on my side to keep him updated about how my projects proceed. The purpose was not, of course, to blame people of the lab (who are nice with me) and I made sure to explain this to him.

Thanks for expressing your opinion, yes I will just keep up the good work! I think I was just overthinking yesterday night

Hi everyone,
I'm a first year PhD student. I know that what I'm going to write is not important for the PhD itself, but for me, person, it is important.
Basically, I've the feeling that my PI doesn't trust/respect me.
First of all, in the beginning of my PhD I was supposed to do a very interesting project on my own but then he gave it to me + a post doc. And this was the first clear signal. I was really really disapponted, and I still am for this.
Then now recently the project was stucked but luckily I figured out that the post doc had made a mistake by distraction. I was happy to have spotted the problem and so I updated my PI (even if the post doc didn't want me to let him know) but then my PI went to speak to him and apparently the postdoc made up a different version of the story (I was not there but this is what I understood by what the post doc told me!!)
Even if I know I'm in the right, I'm worried that my PI won't trust me just because I'm younger than the postdoc.
On one hand I don't care, because I just love my projects and science. On the other hand, I'm a human being made of blood and flesh, and this makes me very disappointed. I think it would be really nice to work with a PI that respects you. Even more because I work and study 13 hours per day (I'm basically addicted to science) and I'm aware that in the last 15 months I've been working well.

What could I do to improve this unpleasant situation and to gain some trust from him?

I already feel better after writing this!
Thank you in advance!
E.

Hello everyone!
I'm first year PhD and yesterday for the first time I had the "pleasure" to be challenged by my collaborators, how if they were reviewers! I guess in science it's quite normal to be challenged, above all because my data are going against what's known in the literature in several points! It was my first time so I didn't say a lot and no one was really listening to me, by the way as usual I think it's always good to have some feedback and it's all part of the training.
I was wondering, if someone is challenging everything, even your results, is it a good idea to send them the original data? I'm very confident about my data (indeed I'm quite famous in my lab to be paranoid in doing plenty of replicates) but at the time of the meeting I must admit I was quite "paralyzed". Do you think it's a good alternative, instead of speaking, just sending all the data after the meeting? In my opinion it makes much more sense to let my work speaking for me.
What do you think? What's the usual procedure?
Thank you
E.

(I think the perfect recipe is: planning/working independently + getting feedback from/being guided by your PI + collaborating/discussing with your colleagues, but not having someone who works on exactly your same work)

I think S. suggested you a good plan: work hard and then every 3-4 weeks insist to get a meeting with him (after all it’s his job!) to discuss about your updated results and potential future exps! My advice of working on your own is mainly referred to the post doc who left and so left you “alone” working on that topic, that I don’t think is negative, but it will be even more stimulating and formative for you to work on your own! Read, talk to the others, go to conferences… have fun!! Good luck!