No one is ever above politics.
And being subjected to lab politics sometimes sucks.
I know that I’ve written about lab politics before, but previously it always had “jokey” undertones (or at least what I imagined to be “jokey” undertones). But now for the first time, I am experiencing the negatives of lab politics.
For those of you who know me well, you will know that my research has to do with Alzheimer’s disease, but that my situation is unique in that I am working on Alzheimer’s disease in a lab full of cancer researchers.
As a result, sometimes it’s hard to “collaborate” with other people in the lab since we’re all pretty much working on different things.
But earlier this year, I was given the opportunity to work on a project with another researcher in our lab. I had the blessings of my graduate student and the post-doctoral fellow who I would be working with, and even though it meant that I would be taking time from working on my own project to help with this project, my graduate student said that it was ok because it would be a good experience for me to learn how to work on a different project.
As a result, for a while, I was doing double duty in the lab, working with both my graduate student and the post-doctoral fellow.