A snapshot in time
Friday Feb. 22, 2019
I screamed into my hands, tears streaming down my face. I opened my eyes and blinked up at the fluorescent lights in our lab office. Suddenly, I noticed the second-year graduate student standing, looking down at me as I lay on the floor. The short, freckled, pixie cut redhead had her arms folded her across her chest. How long had she been standing there? I groaned and covered my face again. “Um, I know you are having a moment, but I’mma need you to get up off that disgusting floor. We have new recruits coming, and we have to convince them that this is the best lab ever, so that they will join and I can graduate. The senior most grad student, crying on the floor isn’t really helping our image.” She gestured emphatically while over annunciating her ts. She reached out her hand, I grabbed it and pulled myself to my feet.
The floor was wet where I was laying. Not from tears—well some tears, but mostly rain. Unpredictable Durham weather had forecasted clear winter skies, but instead brought us a downpour. I was soaking wet. It had been three hours since my 8 am meeting with my advisors. I stared at the locked screen on my computer. Of course, Duke IT had decided to lock me out and asked me to re-sign in—I really needed to be working on my presentation. Two-factor authentication really is helping no one. I needed my phone to unlock, which of course was in my car, which was parked in the furthest most lot. It was pouring outside, and TWO buses left me in the rain. I could have walked—but like I said, it was pouring outside.
I walked out to the bus stop. The rain had lightened up a little. Third time’s a charm, right? I guess I will wait for the THIRD bus. Also frickin’ reviewer three. “Reviewer three”, well in my case, reviewer 1, is the reviewer of your publication that tears your submission to pieces. I had just received comments back,
“the authors repeatedly conflate correlation with causation..”
“…you need to prove (to yourself and to the reader) that…”
“There is a kernel of an interesting finding here, but the study is poorly designed, the experimental analysis is inherently biased, and the results do not deliver mechanistic insight”
The condescension in the reviewer’s response was infuriating. I spent two hours in my advisor’s office discussing all of the comments we received on my paper. Both my advisors started rattling off all the experiments I need to do to “prove” to myself that my results were real. Blah blah blah. I can’t remember the last time these two men were in a room together? I’ve been like a child of divorced parents, both telling me to do different things, having me communicate between them, going back and forth like a yo-yo—“So you can do some of this by Monday right?”
Um what? Do what exactly? “It’s fri-day.” The other one said, “Well you have the whole weekend to do it, we can meet Monday morning to talk about some of the findings”. I looked at them and responded, “No.” They were completely astounded by my direct refusal. “I don’t know what you guys are doing Monday morning, but my thesis defense is at 8.30, I have to prep, and given both of you comprise of 40% of my committee, I hope I’ll see you both there”.
The bus slowed to a stop in front of me. Third time was the charm. The bus driver smiled sweetly at me, “You ready for your big day on Monday?!” I smiled back, “I will be by Monday.”