EPISODE 7: FEELING BULLIED

Speaker: 00:00:07

Hello, and welcome to a Postdocs Journal,

the show that takes you through my journey

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into and eventually out of academia

as a postdoctoral research scientist.

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My name is Simit Patel.

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Hello, thank you very much for joining me.

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For those of you who are perhaps new

to the show, a very warm welcome.

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And for those of you who may

have listened before, thank

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you very much for coming back.

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If you don't already know, I'm Dr.

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Simit Patel.

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This podcast is based on my own

personal journal in each episode I

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read out a journal entry from about

12 years ago back when I was working

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in academia as a research scientist

as a postdoc Then I reflect on it.

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I analyze it I try to make sense of it

and share my thoughts with you today

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with the benefit of 12 years of hindsight

If you are a student or a postdoc, or

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you're just someone struggling a bit

in academia, or if you're just someone

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who can relate to things like imposter

syndrome, loneliness, and just dealing

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with mental health challenges in the

workplace, I hope that by sharing my own

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personal experience with you, that helps

you to feel a little bit less alone.

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In today's episode, we jump to the

middle of October,: 2012

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of weeks after last week's episode.

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This was my first autumn in Germany,

and that's when I realised just

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how beautiful autumn is in Germany.

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The colours you get on the trees

is just magical, especially if

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you just get a little bit of sun.

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Unfortunately, in this journal entry,

it doesn't sound like I'm enjoying

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any of that, and my mood certainly

does not reflect the scenery.

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In this entry I write about how

I thought I was being bullied

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a little in the workplace.

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This is a sensitive subject for me.

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I experienced quite a lot of bullying

early on in my life and I think those

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wounds were still with me back in 2012

and arguably are still with me today.

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So please have a listen to the

reading and I'll be back at the

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end to share some thoughts with

you after 12 years of hindsight.

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Enjoy.

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18th October 2012

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My boss is pushing my, or I suppose

our, research in different directions.

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He wants to abandon the GBS slash RADTAG

sequencing and do pool sequencing instead.

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I'm a little uneasy about it.

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I'm worried I'm being pushed

down a path that isn't good.

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For example, when my PhD supervisor

said doing a linkage mapping

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study with Sapir Nemoralis and

AFLP markers was a good idea.

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I just went along with it

because my supervisor told me so.

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I was inexperienced and

I didn't know any better.

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It turns out it was a flawed

study design from the start.

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The wrong type of marker with

the wrong type of species.

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And it was a mistake to go down that path.

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And I paid the price for it

with a substandard PhD thesis.

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When my current boss gets a new idea,

he tends to get carried away with it.

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And I'm worried he's doing that

because he doesn't have a full

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grasp of the nitty gritty details

of implementing the new idea.

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The details become my problem.

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It's very hard to argue against him,

partially because he has this knee

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jerk reaction to counter any argument

with another argument, and partly

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because I don't have the confidence or

strength of character to argue with him.

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My worst nightmare is having our

collaborator coming to visit,

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and me having to explain to them,

actually, We're not doing GBS or

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RADTAG sequencing anymore, and

the collaborator asking me, why?

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I would have to say we thought

Pulse Seq would be better.

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I wouldn't feel right about saying

that, because it's not true.

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My boss decided it would be better, and

I'm too weak to counter the argument.

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I've basically been bullied into it,

not through any fault of my boss,

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but through my own inability to

stand up for myself and to argue.

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The other side of it is that I've

put so much effort into getting

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the GBS stuff to work in the lab.

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In all honesty, I find the

technique more interesting.

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To have all that work go to

waste is a tough pill to swallow.

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This feels like a test of setting

my emotions aside from the science.

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Rather than making decisions based on my

emotions about a particular technique,

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I have to look at it more objectively.

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The truth is, we don't need individual

genotype information, and it is

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cheaper to do the project by pooling.

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The truth is, I can't come

up with a scientific argument

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against doing things this way.

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The only argument I have against it is

is based on my own fears and concerns,

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which are purely emotive, not scientific.

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I just worry that we don't

know enough about how any of

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the Paul Seek stuff works.

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We're going into it blind

without any relevant experience.

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I don't want any nasty

surprises, not like with my PhD.

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Should I just stay quiet

and go along with it?

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I feel embarrassed to say that I'm doing

it just because my boss told me to.

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Rushing in without thinking

or planning properly.

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And without understanding every

little detail, was the problem with

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my postdoc from the very beginning.

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That's why nothing was working

in the lab from the start.

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No one tested the enzymes, no one designed

the oligos properly, everyone, including

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my boss, just rushed in totally blind, and

I ended up making a complete mess of it.

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Okay, thanks for listening to that.

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As usual, I've written down

some thoughts after reading

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that back and hearing that back.

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I think in general, this entry is

really just about me struggling

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to come to terms with the change

of direction in my research.

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Change isn't easy for, for

a lot of people, and I think

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it's particularly hard for me.

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I think there are many layers to this,

some of which I actually already tried

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to analyze in the journal entry itself.

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First, I'm going to discuss how past

experiences can really influence

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how we perceive things today.

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And then I want to address the question

of, was I actually being bullied?

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Firstly, I think this journal

entry is a nice example of how past

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experiences can really influence your

perception of things in the present.

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This is a known phenomenon in

psychology, and it's clear that

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negative memories seem to have more

of an impact than positive ones.

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We've talked a little bit about negative

bias before in a slightly different

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context, but the same principle applies in

the context of past experiences as well.

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In general, this is thought to

be evolutionarily adaptive, to

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focus on the negative things.

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In my case, I had some bad

memories of how my PhD played out.

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As I described in the journal entry,

Uh, half of my PhD project was basically

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just a badly conceived research idea.

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Uh, it was completely unfeasible

from the very beginning.

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And I only realized that my, half of

my PhD project was flawed when I was

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actually writing up the thesis at

the very end, in the last six months.

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And that was really the first time that I

had the time to really go in depth and do

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that in depth reading and research around

the topic that I really needed to do.

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And I actually had a bit of crappy

data at that point, so I was actually

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able to make those valid comparisons

between my project and previous

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studies that were previously done.

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I remember now that my PhD supervisor

actually, very early on in my PhD, he

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said, That the research project idea

that he put together, uh, he just kind

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of cobbled it together, just for the sake

of getting the, the grant application,

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and he wasn't too sure about it.

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He actually wanted me to disagree

with him and challenge the, the, the

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research idea in the first place,

which ultimately I never really did.

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And at the time, I didn't

realize what this meant.

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I should have realized that this

meant that he didn't know what

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he was doing, and, uh, I needed

to fact check the feasibility of

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this project from the very start.

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This was a big red flag that I just

totally didn't see at the time.

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In my defense, and to be fair, I

think it's very hard to, to do that

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when you've just started your PhD.

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You know, I was 21 years old,

uh, and I was expected to be

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the, the expert right away.

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Uh, it took me about four years

of very hard work to get to that

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expert level, where I was able to

challenge the feasibility of the

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project and have that discussion.

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But expecting that from me

from the very beginning, I

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think was just asking too much.

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And of course, by that point

where I did have the expertise

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to challenge the feasibility of

the project, it was too late.

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It was the end of my PhD.

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The lesson for me in that scenario was

that when your boss comes up with an idea.

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It's not necessarily going to be a

good one, because bosses don't always

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know what they're talking about.

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Even in the journal entry, I said

something like, bosses often don't

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understand the nitty gritty detail

of what actually needs to be

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done to get from the start of the

project to the end of the project.

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And I've got to say, in all my experience

since then, That still holds and that

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holds outside academia as well I think

a lot of bosses don't really understand

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the nitty gritty detail of The ideas

they come up with and that becomes their

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underlings problems And assuming that

your boss does know what they're doing

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is a very dangerous strategy Coming

back to this journal entry, I can see

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how 27 year old Simit was drawing those

parallels between what was happening,

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or what happened during my PhD, and

what was happening in my postdoc.

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But the two scenarios

were slightly different.

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I think one interesting parallel

between those two scenarios, uh, was

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the requirement for me to argue better.

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My PhD supervisor actually

needed that from me, he literally

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told me that when I started.

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He wanted me, he needed me to argue and

come in and be the expert to challenge

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the feasibility of the project.

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He needed me to be the expert and say,

This is gonna work, this is not gonna

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work, this is why it's not gonna work,

this is what we need to do instead.

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And of course I couldn't do that,

I wasn't at, I wasn't there.

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the sort of expert level I needed

to be at the very start of my

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PhD to have those arguments.

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In this journal entry and in other

journal entries we've covered in

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previous episodes, I attributed my

inability to argue to my personality.

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So it wasn't about my expertise

anymore, it was about my personality.

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What I wrote in this journal entry

and others, I decided that my

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inability to stand up for myself and

to disagree with other people was a

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character flaw in me, and that's why.

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I wasn't, um, able to,

to have those arguments.

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Today, I still think it

is part of my personality.

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Don't like confrontation, I

don't like arguing with people.

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But I do think it's very unkind

of myself to call it a flaw.

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Me not wanting confrontation,

not wanting to argue with people

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is, it's just a part of who I am.

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And sometimes that causes

problems in my life.

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But there's very little value

in punishing myself for that.

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That's just Is what it is and there might

even be times where other people tell me

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that that's that's a fault in my character

and that's them not being very kind to

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me, but the bottom line is that is a

part of who I am and I accept that about

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myself and fuck everyone else who thinks

differently over the past say 12 years or

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so I think the way i've learned to cope

with this part of my personality is to

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just avoid scenarios where I have to argue

and Disagree with people and on balance I

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think Not having too many conflicts with

other people has probably benefited me

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more than it's helped me back overall.

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So maybe my inability to argue, as I put

it, is actually one of my superpowers,

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not one of my major character flaws.

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Another interesting parallel between

what happened during my PhD and what

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was happening in my postdoc, in this

journal entry, was that decisions

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were being made by people who perhaps

don't really know what they're doing.

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As already discussed, my PhD supervisor

didn't know anything about the type of

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study that I was supposed to be doing.

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In this journal entry, I wrote about

going into a new research area totally

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blind without any relevant experience.

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Now some of the problems I

experienced in the lab, which

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we've talked about in previous

episodes, were very much due to that.

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No one really tested anything, and I

was just kind of given everything at the

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beginning of my postdoc saying, these are

the things that we've worked out so far,

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so this is what you need to build on.

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I assumed that everything was fine.

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had been tested properly and everything

given to me was correct and then

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all the things that were going wrong

were due to me doing it wrong but it

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turns out a lot of the things that

were given to me were not designed

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properly and not tested properly and

that's why I pissed away so much time

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trying to get everything to work.

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I did eventually get everything to kind

of work although it sort of ended up

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falling flat on its face in the end but

I definitely wasted a lot of time because

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I made that assumption of other people.

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Knowing what they were doing me not

knowing what I was doing So ultimately

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I was paranoid about the same thing that

happened during my phd happening again

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in my postdoc Now I want to be clear.

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I don't think my phd supervisor and

my postdoc boss Were bad scientists

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at all for taking this approach?

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I suppose that's what research is.

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It's the blind leading the

blind until something works.

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Think a big part of being a research

scientist because you do have to

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go into new things all the time.

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That's why it's, it's research.

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It's stuff that no one's ever done before.

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And I wasn't really comfortable

with that level of uncertainty.

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That's just another aspect of

my personality that made me

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unsuitable for a research career.

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And that's fine.

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Now, I think the big thing that's

different between my PhD experience

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and my postdoc experience here,

in my PhD, my supervisor actually

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didn't have the expertise in that

particular topic that I was working on.

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In my postdoc, we tried this one

approach in the lab, and I talked

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about it already, it didn't work

ultimately, and time was running

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out, so we had to change direction.

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It was a pragmatic move and the right one

to make from my boss's point of view and

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from the point of view of the research.

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And with hindsight, I can tell you

now that the change in direction

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for my research was actually

absolutely the right choice to make.

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The original plan just wasn't working

and the new direction did end up working.

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And that actually put me on the path to

some relative success and I was actually

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able to develop the skills I needed in

this new research direction, particularly

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in bioinformatics, which ultimately helped

me in my career move out of academia.

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So it was absolutely the

right move with hindsight.

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Another aspect of why I was having such

a difficult time accepting the change

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in direction of my research was that

I had invested so much time in getting

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things to work in the lab already.

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And I was finally making some progress.

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It was not good progress,

but it was some progress.

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I don't have much to add to this point

because I actually did most of the

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analysis in the journal entry itself.

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And ultimately I was actually able to

separate the emotions from the logic.

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Well done me.

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I think I did well in that journal

entry to come to that realization.

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Now in this journal entry, I said

that I felt like I was being bullied.

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And a question that I have to ask

myself now is, was it actually bullying?

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I think this might be another example

of how past negative experiences

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can really affect your perception

of things in the present day.

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In this case, I think there was an

emotional trigger here that brought

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the past into the present for me.

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In general, when this kind of thing

happens, the emotional response

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can sometimes be disproportionate

to the actual situation at hand.

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In my case, I was bullied quite a

lot when I was a kid, a little bit

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at school, but mostly by family.

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And this has very much stayed with me,

anyone who's ever been bullied before.

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I hope you understand the scars

it can leave you with sometimes

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can take a long time to heal.

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Sometimes they never do.

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In my case, when I encountered that

feeling of anxiety when faced with

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confrontation again, in this case,

trying to argue with my boss about the

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change of direction in my research, I

think my subconscious immediately went

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back to being that bullied kid again.

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Thinking about it now, When I was a

kid and I was getting some support

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for being bullied, when people were

trying to make me feel better about it.

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The message I was getting was that it

was my fault for being bullied because

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I didn't stand up for myself enough.

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It was my fault for being too

sensitive and it was my fault for

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attracting too much attention.

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The problem was about me not being

tough enough or being able to

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stand up for myself or whatever.

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So the support I was getting for

bullying was really just kind

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of blaming me for being bullied

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It's interesting to see that

that is the exact same message.

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I was saying about myself in this journal

entry in the journal entry I said i'll

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quote it I've basically been bullied

into it not through any fault of my

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boss But through my own inability to

stand up for myself and argue That's a

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really interesting connection to make

between my childhood bullying and my

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perception of being bullied as a postdoc.

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I had assumed that there was a link

between the actual bullying I experienced

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as a kid and re experiencing that as a

postdoc via the emotional trigger of the

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confrontation, but I was not expecting to

see a link between the very bad support

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I received for being bullied as a kid.

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And the negative thoughts I have

about myself in this journal entry.

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It's almost like the support I received

for bullying was actually more damaging to

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my self esteem than the actual bullying.

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That's really interesting.

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So on reflection, I think my boss was

just making a smart decision about the

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direction of the research and I wasn't

actually being bullied here, but it

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was just my Her inner child taking over

and writing that journal entry for me.

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So there you have it It felt really

good to go through that journal entry

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again It was very interesting for me

to make those connections between my

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experiences in my childhood to my PhD to

my postdoc and to some extent to today.

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There's something very satisfying

about joining those dots together

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and making those connections.

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: 00:19:09

In my own mental health journey I've

learned that some of the steps you

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: 00:19:14

can take towards breaking away from

the past are to develop self awareness

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: 00:19:18

and to reframe and reinterpret the

past with an alternative narrative.

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: 00:19:23

I feel like I've done some

of that in this episode.

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: 00:19:26

In the next episode we

jump to December: 2012

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: 00:19:30

As things are winding down for Christmas,

I have an end of year reflection.

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: 00:19:36

As you've probably gathered by

now, I'm generally not too pleased

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: 00:19:38

with my performance so far in 2012

and I also end up revisiting that

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: 00:19:43

question of work life balance.

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: 00:19:47

Until then, thank you

so much for joining me.

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: 00:19:49

I hope that's been valuable

for you in some way.

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: 00:19:52

Until the next episode,

please be kind to yourself.

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: 00:20:00

Brute about it, brute until the day,

one day I will clown the words to say.

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: 00:20:16

Thanks again for listening

to a Postdocs Journal.

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: 00:20:19

I've been your host Simit Patel.

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: 00:20:22

If you've enjoyed this episode and you'd

like to help support the podcast, please

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: 00:20:26

share it with others who you think

might find it helpful and interesting.

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: 00:20:30

You could also leave a review over

at Podchaser or on Apple Podcasts.

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: 00:20:34

If you can relate to anything in

this episode, or if you have your

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: 00:20:38

own take on this journal entry,

I would love to hear from you.

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: 00:20:42

Please feel free to reach out to me

on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Blue Sky.

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: 00:20:46

Links to all my social

media are in the show notes.

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: 00:20:50

Thanks again.