Backlog: Rotations

Once upon a time, I picked a grad school out of a hat. Actually, I had a spreadsheet with a couple dozen columns and weights on everything from whether or not the current students had DSM-IV-quality alcohol dependencies to whether or not people got shot on mass transit routes. Ok, not really, but pretty close. I manage to be both neurotically organized and a hot mess at all times.

I started here with a particular PI (principal investigator/professor/boss) in mind. I like to refer to him as the bossman. The bossman did not initially have space to let me rotate. For the new-to-science readers, rotations are 6-8+ week "trial runs" that fresh, green grad students do upon joining a department. The number of rotations and incarceration time length vary, but everyone does a few turns. I rotated in lab A, led by someone I've learned that I despise working under but enjoy working with (great colleague, terrible boss). I worked with animals. It was terrible. I decided not to work with animals. I rotated in lab B, led by someone I ended up putting on my committee and hating. I did cell work and did the same thing every day in lab B. I decided I never wanted to do cell work again.

After groveling, I landed a rotation in the bossman's lab. The current grad student was finishing some time soon, relatively reclusive, and gave me what I found later to be terrible information. I started a project that could in no way be finished in any amount of time remotely near 8 weeks. After 8 weeks, I had no data and was only, perhaps, 3 weeks into my project. This should have been a sign, but it wasn't. The bossman told me I could join the lab if I could find funding, although our department funds students for their first two years (this is key information here). Since every other human entity in that lab had been on this particular training grant which was well-suited by our work, I lucked out and got a spot on it, too.

Training Grant: (noun) 1. A 5-year pre- or post-doctoral fellowship which requires some moderate grant subject-specific coursework but pays your tuition and goverment-decided stipend (your boss covers the gap between what the government thinks you should make and what your department's minimum stipend is). 2. Money that seems free, but totally fucks up your taxes later. 3. A way for several people to decide what you should be doing with your projects, future career, and overall life.

Bossman, in his infinite wisdom, started me on that training grant after one year of department funding, even though I had an additional year to use up. The day that grant started paying me, my PhD-ological clock started ticking. After 5 years, you can not get another pre-doctoral fellowship from the government. The department does not give you the money you didn't use at the beginning. Theoretically its the bossman's responsibility to pay me after that, but since he didn't write me into any of his grants, he won't pay for me either. So the clock really started ticking, and early on.

[Aside: I see you humanities PhDs out there with your incredulous "It took me eight years to finish! And I was happy about it! What the fuck is your problem?" steam coming out of your ears. Science PhDs don't take eight years. Life is different on the biological side. Also, my department doesn't have an undergrad component, so we don't have to TA. However, we can't TA, even if we can't find funding, because we'd be stealing other department's positions. Sharp double-edged sword, that one is.]