Work Ethics and Moral Dilemmas

In terms of my personal work ethic, I am definitely a sprinter rather than a marathon runner. Last week was spent recovering (i.e. checking my email, taking long lunches, trawling the deep ocean trenches of the www) from the month before, which consisted of mad data scrabbling, proposal ping-pong with PI, and the joys of importing large images into Word, but culminated in a very satisfactory thesis advisory committee meeting. Having crested the TAC meeting mountain, I am now confronting another alp of work directly ahead and I feel like camping out at the bottom of it while I gather my strength for the next big push.

Is that lame? I might just be making excuses for being a big huge slacker. When I read other lady lab rats' blogs they all seem like they are doing a lot more work than I am.

I guess you're not supposed to admit it when you're being a slacker. Or "collecting your thoughts" - or whatever it was that you call sitting in the coffee shop for two hours in the morning. I wonder: if I actually worked every day, how much more I would get done?

Downside of being a good bullshitter is that it's too easy to keep bullshitting . . .

I picked a good committee. I have a range of ages and degrees of famousness, as well as a balanced sex ratio. My two female committee members are very cool. The younger has become my collaborator (I have a tiny mentor-crush on her), and the other reminds me of my mom in terms of being nice but no-nonsense. They asked me, while my PI was out in the hall and we were waiting for the third, a grandfatherly figure with a big white beard, how I was doing. I mentioned that I'd been having a bit of difficulty with my confidence level this past year and getting, possibly, just a little too emotionally invested in the success of my Western blots.

Was this a tactical error? It is a bad move to reveal any weakness to one's superiors?

They were very nice, though, and cautioned me against the "Impostor Syndrome" - that's the one where you're sure that some day everyone is going to find out that you've been faking it the whole time . . . I managed not to cry (being quite touched as well as emotionally labile) and the outcome of the meeting did give me a boost of confidence.

But then, before the meeting, my PI went back into the conference room and it was my turn to wait in the hall. While they all talked about me. It was the most excruciating five minutes (five hours?) ever. I had to sit in the hall in the polka-dotted chair while three tenured and one associate professors talked about me.

Did my PI tell them I was a slacker-slash-sprinter? Did they tell him I was snivelling like a little girl? Is my PI going to feel compelled to give me additional pep talks, replete with personal anecdotes, to bolster my confidence? It's too horrific even to think about.

I didn't mean to talk about this, but I guess I will leave it in, and go tend to my hungry cells.