A Bridge Too Far Burned, or How to Deal with a Colleague’s Rejection
“You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there’s still going to be somebody who hates peaches.”
I so badly wanted Megan* to like me.
We met when I interviewed for a spot in our PhD program at University of Illinois. After doing some research on the current students in the program, I was very excited to meet her most of all. After all, we had almost identical research interests and personal backgrounds. We were both Midwest born and raised, with professional experience in education, and our research interests were in informal education and museum administration. We both were eager to help conduct research in museums to prove the civic role that they played in critical areas of learning. Clearly eager to help our fellow man, we had also both previously served in domestic volunteer work — she in Teach for America, myself in AmeriCorps. Megan also had many of the accoutrements I wanted when I was older, such as a position on a nonprofit board, a happy marriage to her college sweetheart, and an adorable baby son.
I took her and her background as someone who could show me the ropes of the academic world, and I had silly fantasies about us presenting posters and papers together at conferences, maybe even working together in the same university.
What I didn’t expect, however, was how much she would truly detest me.
When the professor who would become my mentor introduced us during the meet-and-greet part of the interview day, Megan briefly shook my hand, said it was a pleasure to meet me, and then proceeded to avoid me for the rest of the event, turning to talk to her current cohorts or chat with the professors while we all had drinks and hors d’oeuvres at a local watering hole. Very bizarre behavior for a potential associate, especially since it was all but guaranteed we’d be in the same lab on the same project, but I chalked it up to nerves, and thought nothing more about it. Being nervous, new, or shy isn’t a crime, I mused.
Or so I thought.
****
We seemed to have started off on a really wrong foot, when we had our first meeting. I had never done an IRB training before, and it was instructed that Megan would teach me. As she was a parent, one co-PI remarked, Megan ‘should have the talent to mentor and help’. She was in a foul mood with me as a result of this professor’s remark, even though I was not the one who made a sexist comment and ordered her to do something she did not have time for. But, it was easier to be mad at me, rather then the co-PI, who held so much more power then I did in our lab.
Megan’s dislike of me absolutely revved up once our co-PI wiped the floor with me during a bad presentation of the data I had collected that week during finals week of the Fall semester. Still reeling from his shouting and the deafening silence of our other PI and associates during the meeting, I asked Megan what I should do next.
Turning to me with her brown eyes narrowed in rage, her quick little fingers still typing another email, she screamed at me for ‘wasting everyone’s time’ during the meeting. That I should probably think about if I really deserved to be here, that she doubted I had a graduate degree already or that I had previously done work in our field. The final kicker before I walked out of the conference room to get away from her and her shouting, was when she told me to ‘stop being a @#$%ing retard and actually do some real work!’.
I did not think an associate, one who knew exactly what I was going through, could be so cruel. Especially in a field that prided itself on cultural sensitivity and social justice. Especially since she knew I had a learning disability and hearing that term used was very painful to me.
I cried the entire train ride home back to my apartment.
****
No one is immune from tyranny.
It should go without saying that I emotionally distanced myself from Megan after the screaming fit she had at me. A few months later, our co-PI finally snapped at her too, near the end of my tenure at our lab. With his mercurial moods and pugilistic attitude towards criticism, it was inevitable. He demanded that we work during Memorial Day, that we cancel vacation plans and time with our families and friends to fix his project — which wouldn’t have been terrible, but for someone who stressed the importance of union rights and recognizing workers’ ability to relax, it felt incredibly hypocritical. Strangely enough, Megan and I agreed on this, for once. We would sacrifice needed time off to reset and recharge to make our co-PI happy and proud of us.
When we presented our work to him after powering through the 3 day weekend, unsurprisingly, he verbally wiped the floor with us. I was called ‘inept’, Megan was blamed for my ‘ineptness’, and we were told to work over the weekend in order to fix it. I had no tears left to cry, and simply groaned at this. Megan, however, was silent, and quickly ran to her car after our meeting. I thought about reaching out to her, perhaps an email or a text of comfort, but remembering the horrid things she said to me throughout the year, decided against it. I did not have the reserves to be emotionally there for someone who was alternatively distant and cruel.
Megan and I made plans to meet at her new house and work on the project together over the weekend. While there, we played with her toddler son while fixing our Excel spreadsheets and videos of recordings on our laptops to our PI’s exact orders. While plugged into NVivo and looking over the data that was collected on a recent field excursion, something completely changed.
Without our PIs or cohort in the room, surrounded in the comfort of her cute new Prairie style bungalow in North Park, a new Megan emerged, to my jaw dropping amazement.
When we took a well-needed break from analyzing and arranging data, she offered to take me on a tour of the new house that she and her husband had been saving for, while I helped give her little boy a piggyback ride. I marveled over the historic fireplace and spacious rooms, and she…dispensed quality advice on how to negotiate for a lower down payment on real estate. Woah, wait, what?!
Megan picked up color swatches from Sherwin Williams that was on the lovely fireplace. Did I think eggshell white went better with Soldier Blue, or would a deep grey go better? I had an eye for detail, she told me, she could tell from my work. I was speechless. All the brusque snaps, all the yelling and belittling…and she wants my opinion on how to decorate her house now? And a…compliment? What?
We moved onto the kitchen. She showed me pictures on her fridge of her sorority, and how none of them, despite pledging to be sisters forever, spoke to her any more, 12 years later. Of how much she loved theatre, and the only way she could be creative was through cake decorating now. About how much she wanted to travel more, and how envious she was of my trips to central America and my upcoming trip to Turkey.
Megan was stressed, and lonely, and for the first time, I felt sorry for her.
After finishing up, we actually hugged. We swore to relax at the end of it all, and I rode my bike back to my apartment, smiling all the way.
****
Speaking of inevitable, of course it was going to go badly when we presented our fixed data to our co-PI that following week. He critiqued it on the tiniest details, and screamed at us for wasting his time again.
Naturally, the last string to play in this pathetic orchestra, was that Megan turned on me in front of the co-PI, again. The only reaction I had from myself was silence and raised eyebrows. All that friendly behavior from the weekend, all of that open and candid discussion about failure and self-reflection, on loneliness and house paint and down payments, the supposed bonding that we did. Gone. Just, gone.
I suppose I should have broken down, or cried, or had some sort of reaction while Megan screamed at me while our co-PI smirked at the psychological carnage he instigated among his subordinates, like a weird emotional Thanos. It didn’t hurt, strangely enough. This time, while watching Megan berate me on ‘wasting her time’, I didn’t see an angry senior doctoral student who had power over me due to lab experience. I saw the vulnerable 30-something that didn’t know where her future was and the loneliness that haunted her, the pictures of friends on her fridge she missed, the exhaustion from moving to a new place with a small child.
Now, when she said, ‘you’re wasting my time’, I knew she was parroting our co-PI, who perhaps was respecting her for behaving in the exact same manner that he was, grooming her to become an abusive manager just like himself.
A few weeks later, I left that lab to manage a museum’s education department. I also left that program because I could not conduct the research I wanted to do. But, more importantly, I could not be surrounded by so many sick people, including Megan. My new program wasn’t without vices — professors were busy, people still argued over silly things in class. But I never saw the nastiness from that lab ever again.
****
Maybe it’s me. I like blaming myself for when my relationships fail. Maybe it’s because I’m so awkward I might as well be a character in a John Green book. I’m way too tall, my laugh is horse-like, I talk loud, I come up with weird ideas and I have no issues correcting people out loud. I dress either too funny or too boring. I watch weird documentaries and suffer from trembling hands and crippling depression. I smile too much and too wide. Maybe I’m just emotionally exhausting to be around.
Or maybe it’s a broken system. Stressing the ‘kiss-up-kick-down’ that many organizations, including universities, impart on their people only leads to higher amounts of mental illness, not to mention higher amounts of drop outs and departures from academia. That the only people who deserve your support and emotional strength are those above you, and that by isolating and harassing a younger colleague gives you a sense of power and shows those above you that you are an assertive and strong individual who can handle anything. Maybe.
All I know from this experience are two things:
First, I wish I could become friends with Megan someday. As a person who her views herself as empathetic and prides herself on being inclusive, it really cut me deep that she detested me right from the beginning. But, just like our co-PI viewed me, I wasn’t good enough for her, and I’ve accepted that. For whatever reason, I pressed a button that stoked a fire of rage that I could not put out, that a brief window of niceness during a working weekend couldn’t damper. To this day, she refuses to be Facebook friends with me, or even connect with me on LinkedIn. I don’t know what I did. But her burning the bridge before it was even crossed was a great tragedy, as I could have introduced her to so many opportunities through my current job, the boards I serve on, or the amazing communication project that I serve with.
Second, I swore whatever the Rich Blonde White Lady Blood Oath equivalent is, that I would never isolate, scream at, or belittle my younger colleagues. That I was going to go to lunch with them, allow them to ask questions, stand for them when challenges arose, and do my damndest to make sure they succeed. I know that this has helped them succeed — I’ve seen people I mentored and helped get great jobs, get into graduate school, and get amazing offers to travel and perform.
That bridge has two ways to cross, and I’ve seen it be crossed multiple times. People I’ve mentored and worked closely with have no problems inviting me to speak to their classes, offer to volunteer for my organization, or give me other opportunities that I otherwise would not have had, had I not been able to be friends with them.
Learn from people like Megan. Never burn the bridge before you cross it.
*= Names have been changed.
