Professional relationships

Continuing with my relationship issues, here's a post dealing with some professional issues I've had to confront recently. Suggestions and comments will be welcomed with cookies!

This needs a little background before getting into things. My lab is kind of on a line between biosciences (my program), and an engineering department, as my advisor is faculty in both areas. I am one of the first graduate students in my lab, and have had a fairly close relationship with my advisor from day 1. My advisor refers to me as a friend, and some of our discussions have blurred the line between "friend" and "student/advisor" relationships (which makes me mildly uncomfortable at times). My labmates K and J both came into the lab after I did, and do not have this relationship to our advisor. K is working on an MS in the engineering program, while J is our new PhD student in biology.

A while back, Advisor had invited me to give a poster presentation for a funding agency. I didn't really feel I could take the extra time away from classes, having already gone to one conference and been sick this semester. I suggested that my advisor take labmate K, who hadn't had the opportunity to go to the other conference. Advisor agreed, and told K what was required by when. When deadline time rolled around, K was nowhere near ready. (Though it did eventually get done.)

This is not a new pattern with K, which is frustrating for me and our advisor. K has had issues with classes (mostly related to switching fields after undergrad) and with procrastination (the reason the first conference didn't work out). Curiously, though, K has no problems finding time to take 10 mile hikes and pursue other recreational activities. I'm hoping that my suggesting K for this presentation doesn't lower my standing in my advisor's eyes (though I'm not really worried), and I'm wondering how I can help K get back on track.

I've not sat down and discussed this with K, as I think that would end badly. The fact that I am in a different (and K thinks, easier) program is part of it (though I've taken and done well in most of the engineering classes). I know K is depressed, in part about classes and her relationship with our advisor, and I'm definitely not qualified to deal with that. How can I help my labmate step up and really succeed? I'm seeing time management issues, mostly, and the panic that comes with realizing you've gotten in over your head. Is there anything I can do to step in and help out? Or is it up to K to deal with this and ask for help if and when they want it? I realize that some people are just not cut out for science and/or grad school (or aren't ready at this point in their lives), but it feels like I've done something wrong when someone I should have been supporting and helping is having this much trouble.

Thoughts?

Growing up can suck.

How does one decide when to end a friendship? I thankfully haven't had to deal with this very much in my life, but it seems to be an issue now. I've known my friend (we'll call her Erica) for about ten years; for most of that time we were very close. When she was dealing with the aftermath of assault, I was the one she called, and when I had professional setbacks that put me in tears, she was there to talk me through it. My problem now is that we seem to be growing apart, and I'm not sure whether it's worth trying to fix the friendship or just let it go.

Erica is bubbly, bright, intelligent and can be very sweet, but she has always been kind of selfish and not the type to really put effort into friendships. I have almost always been the one to call her and to make arrangements to get together when I'm in town (once or twice a year, recently). She likes to talk about her work and her social dramas (especially the boyfriend(s) of the month), and often doesn't pick up on when I want or need to talk about something. Subtlety is very much not her strong suit. Nor is remembering important dates, or being anywhere within 15 minutes of when she's said she'll be.

On the other hand, I am nearly always 5 minutes early, make a point to remember and acknowledge birthdays, etc., and would rather talk about current events or entertainment than her work (which in no way relates to my interests), though gossip is usually okay. These differences have started to grate on my nerves, and over the last year or so, I've started feeling drained when I hang out with her. Also, when we had several months of no communication this year, I found that I didn't really miss her all that much. Am I an awful person for thinking this, and yet still wanting (somehow) to fix our friendship and get it back to the way it used to be?

I think one of the major issues is how busy we both are. I don't have the time or energy to chase her down for a phone call or a meetup that will ultimately end in me being frustrated and angry, and she hasn't picked up her half of the burden, either because of time constraints or just not caring. But at the same time, I have gone through a lot with this woman - I've trusted her with every secret I had, and had so many good times with her. I'd like to think there's still some good in the relationship and that it can be rescued.

Readers: what do you think? Given that I see Erica at most twice a year, is it worth the effort to salvage this friendship? Do you have any suggestions on how I should go about saving or ending it?

You know it's the end of the semester when...

It's definitely the end of the semester. It's obvious from the declining number of cars in the parking lots at 8am, from the conversations undergrads have as they walk around campus, and from the attitudes in my grad classes. No one is interested in this week - it's all about getting through it and getting the heck out of here. I am no exception, as I seem to have lost all motivation, despite the fact that I have assignments, an exam, and a take home final standing between me and home.

I'm working on a couple of posts about relationships and how to deal with problems in professional and personal situations. Both are pulled from issues that I've had this semester, so I'm working on how to make them slightly more anonymous. We'll see if I can do that and get them posted before the holiday.

I'm leaving for home early next week - here's hoping that the storms this week are clearing the way for a no-weather-delays week next week. I'd really like to not sleep in airports this trip.

For now, though, it's back to forcing myself to study and write papers. For everyone else with the same issue - Good luck!

Sometimes long weekends... are really long

Happy late Thanksgiving, all. Hope everyone had a good and safe holiday (the first time I typed that, I wrote "food" rather than "good"... tell you anything about my Thursday?). I didn't get to see my family this year, because I couldn't take the time after being sick last month. Not that I've gotten much schoolwork done, but my apartment is clean, my labmate's cat is fed, and I'm so bored I'll probably be productive tomorrow. Slightly less than 3 weeks until I get to take data on the plane and work from the relatively stress free environment in my parents' house. I. Can't. Wait.

Science-wise: At the conference last month, there were a couple of talks about using passive acoustic monitoring to estimate population densities of marine mammals, especially off the northern coast of Alaska, where it's often very difficult to visually observe whales/walruses/ etc. This article summarizes an attempt to use computer algorithms to do the same thing from bird song, with associated applications to marine mammals. The summary isn't very detailed, and I'll need to read the paper before I can really agree with whether or not it will be useful in my field, but it seems promising.

Ooops

Been a while.... shortly after the last post, I took off to go and visit family and friends for the weekend, and went straight from that visit to meeting with a potential collaborator. Well, the morning of the meeting (as Murphy's Law would predict) I was awake at 4 am with the flu. Got through and got through the long drive back okay.

Proceeded to prepare my talk for my department that I was supposed to give that week, until my advisor ordered me to call the Chair, cancel the talk, and go recover. That was a good call - I ended up being knocked on my ass all week. I'm still not entirely caught up with getting back to people after the conference in October.

Bought my ticket home a week or so ago....I can't wait. For some reason this year is simultaneously inching oh-so-slowly towards when I get to see my family again and rocketing through classes and deadlines for grants, etc. Oi. Hopefully I'll be able to do some catching up this coming week, after my in-prep grant proposal goes out the door.

In other news... water on the moon! That's pretty spiffy. :)

Scientists are people too!

Who knew, right? It was very surreal to watch all the people I'd seen giving talks and schemed to introduce myself to drinking and dancing and having fun on Friday night. Great end to a good conference.

I had a really good time at the conference, especially enjoyed not being in PA during the nasty snowstorm (!) that hit last week. Bizarrely early in the year for that kind of weather, though. When I get a few minutes, I'll list off a few of my favorite talks from the week and give a better summary of my impressions and what I learned. Right now, though, it's time to start playing catchup for the classes I missed while I was gone. :)

October? What?

I finished my poster today. Despite the weeks of panicking over doing one certain analysis (which it turns out I didn't do or even need to do for this poster) and procrastinating to the best of my extensive abilities, it's done. All I have to do is get it printed tomorrow or Wednesday. Hooray!

I've also been invited to another talk in December... we'll see. I might talk to Advisor about taking one of my labmates... I feel like I'm being favored and as much as I like it, it isn't fair to let my labmate wallow in misery while I go jetting off to all sorts of places she'd like to be. Though she may shun this one because it's funded by people she doesn't particularly care for. We'll see.

Classes are going better than I have any right to expect them to, but my apartment has taken the hit for that. I'm behind on all of my chores and trying to get ready to leave for a week on Friday. hoo, boy. This is also not helped by my forementioned Procrastination Skills (yes, they are good enough to deserve capital letters. Maybe that's a bad thing...)

In science news... yeah, I've got nothing. Sorry 'bout that. How about this: the biennial conference of the Society for Marine Mammology meets next week in Quebec City, Canada. If you want to see the biggest and best collection of Action Nerds (Moore, C. 2003. Fluke; or, I know why the winged whale sings) on the planet, be there!