Lab Dynamics

[Humulus_lupulus]

I'm going to do my best to try to summarize this as objectively as possible, in hopes of getting some advice on how to handle this.

I'm in the beginning of my second year of my MS degree in engineering. I am in a lab with four other graduate students, one second-year MS who did his undergrad in a different department at the university, and three PhD who are international students who have been here 4+ years. And then there's me--I came from another US university from a life sciences major. We also have 11 undergraduate students in the lab, ranging from freshman to senior, most of whom have been around since freshmen.

In August, there was a problem with one of the methods I was using. I was going to use a method from a collaborator, but my lab-mates suggested I use "our" method, which was drastically different than the method from our collaborator. So, obviously, I wanted to get to the bottom of why this method was so different. I was emailing around asking the lab manager and some others about the method and how it was developed, where it came from, etc. One lab manager emailed me back and specified a method he used, which closely matched the one from our collaborator. The other lab manager RIPPED me...basically saying she didn't appreciate my attitude and how I told her she was wrong in front of a bunch of people, blah, blah, blah. Long story short, I emailed back (nicely) with some more questions, and I got ripped again. My advisor dealt with this immediately, pretty much telling her to calm down, and giving me some insight on how I might better address it with her in the future.

Throughout the past couple of months, there have been some other problems that have come up in the lab, some of which I have handled poorly, in retrospect. Specifically, I called some people out in email, copying the whole group. Not to be rude, mainly just to clarify something, but my intentions got misconstrued. I understand how I could have handled those situations differently, and I'm moving forward and learning. My advisor also made it very clear to the lab manager that I wasn't trying to be a jerk, I just wanted my research to be done properly.

Fast forward to the past couple of weeks. I was stuck late in the lab one day because the process times were long, not getting my samples to be finished until 4:30. From the outset of my project, I understood that I would be handling the samples in one step, and the undergrads would be the ones processing them in the final step. So, when I went over at 4:30, I had hoped there would be at least one person around to help me out. A few stuck around until 5, and then the rest of the crew showed up and they all left--together! I suspect they were going out to dinner, as that is a "regular" thing for Thursday night. A job that should have taken a few of us 30 mins ended up taking 2 hours for me to do it myself. I wasn't just going to dump and run, I planned to stay and help.

Last week, I was walking by the lab on my way home, and I overheard some of the undergrads talking negatively about me. I suppose this was backlash from when I asked my advisor to drop by the lab to take a look at some of my samples that got messed up by the undergrads who processed them. He came by and started asking one of the seniors some questions--very respectfully!--just trying to understand the sources of the problem. (My advisor has excellent interpersonal skills and he has a good rapport with everyone in the lab, so he wasn't coming across as being "threatening.") It was a very friendly discussion between the three of us, and the undergrad agreed that there were a few ways to help prevent the problem. I guess it wasn't as friendly as I thought, because it got totally misconstrued to mean "all the undergrads are in trouble." The undergrad went and told one of the other undergrads, and they both went and told a half-baked version of the story to the lab manager (the one who ripped me previously), who believed them! WHAT?!

I'm really starting to feel alienated. I have to beg for help most of the time, and even when I do, it's not always available. I've been feeling a significant disconnect lately--they can all be sitting around the lab and making plans for going out to eat, and not even TRY to invite me, just the other MS student who got his undergrad degree here. Then to know that they were badmouthing me and were supported in that by the lab manager is just icing on the cake. I know I'm not always going to get along with everyone I work with, but it's to the point where I don't feel like I want to try to do any work because it will just get met with resistance.

I've talked with my advisor about this, and he is very supportive of me, but I feel like he is not being aggressive enough with how he is handling it. It's been 3 months now, and things are really just getting worse. HELP!

[TakeruK]

I'm going to give you some thoughts on what you wrote. I hope they are helpful as the point of view of a third party. Keep in mind though that I'm not from a bench science so my field might have a few differences in terms of culture. But also, I suspect lab-to-lab culture would vary a lot more than the difference between my experience with my research group and you with your lab.

1. I think it's really important to learn to never ever call people out in email. Especially if you are not able to tell when you are calling people out (as it sounds like from your description). Whenever I write an email, I always always double check to not reply-all unless I really want it to be reply-all. I set my Gmail default to "reply" not "reply-all" for this reason. My experience with this is mostly in emails with collaborators/coauthors.

One thing to keep in mind is that asking questions, especially when it's in text form without context, can easily be misconstrued as "calling someone out" or "doubting their research". So, if I working with some coauthors and e.g. a paper draft gets circulated to the list and I have some questions about the methods used, I would never email the entire author list with questions. That would certainly sound like I was calling out the person that did the work. I would just email that single person individually and ask.

2. In my field's culture, it was totally inappropriate of you to expect the undergraduates to have stayed to finish the work beyond 5pm, unless there was a lab protocol that expected to stay for certain times. Even though you are assigned undergraduate help, the description here sounded like you expected them to drop whatever they were doing at 4:30 and come help you when your samples were ready for the next step. I feel like there could have been room for a ton of misunderstanding because i) the undergrads might not have known that you were expecting them to help at that time and ii) the undergrads might have expected more advance warning (e.g. you probably knew that you were planning to do your step of the sample handling before that afternoon, could you have told them your plan and asked ahead of time if they would be available?).

3. There is no such thing, to an undergrad, as a "friendly discussion" between the "three of you" (you, the faculty member and the undergrad), especially if the topic of the conversation is how the undergrad screwed up. It might have seemed friendly and innocent to you, but having been the undergrad in that position before, I can certify that it absolutely sucks. It feels like you are a child in trouble at the Principal's office. I'm not saying that students should not be "debriefed" when they make mistakes---they definitely need to learn! But I'm just saying that this scenario that you described as "friendly" read as very "not friendly" to me.

Overall, my honest opinion is that there is one common theme between all three issues here. It is that you present your interpretation of events as the "truth" and the interpretation by others as "misconstrued". However, I think if you want to move forward and create better working relationships, it's absolutely critical that you stop thinking of other interpretations of misunderstandings of your intentions. Instead, I would suggest that you think of all of your colleagues' interpretations as equally valid alternative interpretation to yours. That is, I think you have been focussing so much on your intent and that all of your attempts to fix the problems have been to clarify your intent. 

However, I think the best way to move forward is to think more about your impact. And when things don't go well, think about what actions you can take to change the impact you have on your colleagues. That is, if you find that they were upset by something you said or did, instead of just trying to explain your intentions so that it "makes sense" to them the same way it makes sense to you, you can try to make amends by doing something that would have a positive impact instead. 

I hope that was helpful? I bolded the impact/intent words because these are the words I've learned in my training, and the mantra "impact, not intent" is what matters. Here, I might be leaving out a ton of details/info that are obvious to me but if they don't make sense, we could certainly talk about them further. Especially since even though you have provided some details, there could be further details that make my analysis not as valid. I would suggest that in your new quest to repair relationships, you start with the lab manager and other graduate students and work your way to the undergraduates.