The Immunology & Microbiology Department at Wayne State, to which I now ostensibly belong, is having a Christmas party this Thursday at noon in the department lounge/library - complete with a "White Elephant" gift exchange. Given only the facts I have just laid out for you in the previous sentence, I did not need to be informed by the very gossipy secretary that the party would be pretty lame, though I did appreciate the validation of my gut feeling. First of all, it's being held on Thursday. In the middle of the day. With no alcohol allowed. A "party" in the middle of the day on a Thursday without booze just screams lameness. I'm very grateful to have Brenna's thesis defense at 3:00 that day as my out.
All of that aside, the secretary also confirmed my assessment of the department that I had gleaned just from sitting back and observing how the other students and faculty interacted - or didn't - during seminars. Students and faculty apparently don't mix. Even during the new student welcome lunch thingy near the beginning of the semester, faculty segregated themselves to one side of the room, while students went to the opposite side - and never the twain shall meet. She said that Dr. N (whose lab I just finished rotating in) was one of the good faculty and I got an idea of which faculty members did not impress her with their graciousness, to put it nicely. She said she was telling me all of this because, "you're one of the nicest graduate students and I like you." A few weeks ago, she was talking with me about different TV shows she likes and mentioned how she would never talk about that kind of stuff with "the doctors" because I guess she felt as though they fancied themselves too highbrow for things like TV. That was a big red flag. If the department secretary doesn't feel comfortable talking to many of these faculty members, in my opinion, there's a serious problem within the department. I suppose that everything she told me could simply be her own paranoia at work, but I highly doubt that. This woman doesn't have a shy bone in her body, and I find her likable and quite pleasant. She may be a person that an introvert like me can only take in small doses, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that. I'm trying not to let my imagination run wild with worst case scenarios (which is extremely difficult for me), but this whole departmental dynamic worries me. I'm also very concerned about finding the right mentor and lab environment (slim pickings since hardly anyone has funding), but I realize it's kind of early to get too worked up about it. I also recognize that I will probably get too worked up about it too soon in spite of myself.
As for how I'm doing in my classes, I'm doing okay in molecular biology, but not so hot in cell biology. I scored a 68% on each of my last two exams - and there are only four exams in the course, so I freaked out thinking that I was going to get kicked out of the program. I emailed the graduate coordinator, who told me that I wasn't doing as badly as I thought I was. He said that usually the pass/fail line is somewhere in the low 60% range. Since my mean exam score is 75%, while I have room to improve on the final exam, I should be fine overall. Instantly, I went from feeling like a moron who probably deserved to be given the boot to being disgusted by how low the program standards are. It would almost be funny if it wasn't true. What the hell is wrong with me?! Why can't I just be happy that I'm probably not going to fail and stop there? Nope, I've got to muddle it all up with some horror sprinkled with disgust. Christ, I should just be shot and sent off to the glue factory.
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