PhD or Abusive Relationship?

After a week and a half of grant renewal mania hell, it's finally over. My inbox can be purged of the 257 messages from my PI. We think he almost, almost, has a working knowledge of the powers and limitations of EndNote now.

We also managed to come up with an Aim 2 that pleased most of us, eventually. After sixteen iterations. After twenty-seven emails in which I am:

• chastized for talking about protein-protein interactions in the Anticipated Results section when "we never proposed to do co-immunoprecipitations!" Well, in a sense, I concede . . . We proposed to "use myc-tagged protein as bait to pull down and identify binding proteins." Which, for the unititated, means doing co-IPs.
• yelled at for being too general.
• yelled at for being too specific.
• told off for not mentioning the constructs we're getting from the X lab.
• told I'm not supposed to worry about the constructs we still need to obtain from the Y lab, we'll do that later!
• told that, "You know, putting my talk together the other day it occurs to me that maybe this Rac/Rho story isn't as simple as we thought . . . "

To that last one I could only stare at the computer screen, dumbstruck. Dumbstruck because that's what I have been trying to point out for the last three years. Inarticulately, I must suppose, if it took three years for me to make it. But also struck dumb with tears of relief and gratification. Now is the delicate time, the magical twilight hour where he and I are as one mind in this, and before he tears off down another road and leaves me with a scattered pile of Western blots, shaking my head.

There are many things about me that do not a great scientist make. Mainly these have to do with organization and focus. But damn it if my most dearly held hunches haven't turned out to be things I should not have let myself be talked out of looking into at least 70% of the time!

So then we get the conciliatory email on Friday thanking everyone for our help and apologizing (almost) for being a slave driver. You know the one. It goes, "I only hit you because I get so damn mad sometimes, baby. You know I love you, baby. Here are some pretty flowers."

Oh, thank you!!! I love flowers!!! I feel a warm fuzzy glow - nonironically. A real, honest to God glow. What a sweet flower-giving guy. He only beats us to make us stronger.

It's almost endearing, really.

He means well and has actually been helpful as an advisor. We're all crazy in our own special ways.

And look, whenever I "walk into a door" he brings me roses!