Anger is a wonderful agent

Today, I was fuming mad when I came home.

HippieHusband tried to hug me but I told him to back off or I would hit him. After I barked at him, I grabbed my running gear and headed for the hills.

There's a track near where we live and I ran and ran. It felt so great. I forgot about my head exploding or my body not being what I want it to be and I just ran.

Being a postdoc in a small town where the only people you socialize with are new faculty, because there aren't that many postdocs or even grad students, is not a fun position. SmallUniversity is incestuous in its social circles, everyone knows everyone and everyone gossips with everyone else.

It means that when I encounter a problem with my supervisor and want advice I can't really talk with anyone - not even if I were to go outside of my department. There's no support system here.

What's even worse is that most of these people are on grants courtesy of the graciousness of TheGodfather. The Godfather is the head of a very large grant. This grant provides seed money to people like my supervisor, Dr. Add'EmUp, to pay for me and research supplies so that they can get data, which will eventually allow them to get external grants, like NIH. It's a fabulous system, but with one flaw.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

No one person should ever have this much power.

TheGodfather (aka TheBully, TheBigCheese) is a smart businessman, an excellent grant writer, and a politically savvy individual. His science, well, it doesn't seem like there's much time for it. By all accounts, he spends much of his time networking both locally and internationally and as a result he has the ear of many important people, including SmallUniversity President. Not bad for a scientist.

The faculty here at SmallUniversity really appreciate his presence. He deals with all the political bullshit so that they get to do research. Without him, many of them would have to play politics, lobbying the president for the university to support them. Every NIH grant has a section that asks how is the university supporting your research. Well, with TheGodfather, it's clear that faculty here have a much easier time of filling out that section.

The downside, is that he is well, "challenged" in the way he interacts with faculty, postdocs, and students. An example of how TheGodfather is challenged is found here. But you don't really get to where he is unless there is a little bit of punch in you.

The real effect of having someone who is "challenged" in their human relations is that he is the PI on the grant that awards money to several different projects, including the one that I'm on. This mean that faculty must kiss his ring at the expense, sometimes, of the people that work for them.

What's that saying, "there are no free lunches..."

Because my supervisor is a newbie at running a lab, I think occasionally, TheGodfather, takes him under his wing and gives him 'advice.' Advice like, "You really should have your "pulse on the lab." TheGodfather, who needs control over everything, thinks that this is an effective way to run a lab. He's so effective at running a lab people who have left his lab want nothing to do with him ever again. Many students who start with him, quit. He had one postdoc for six years who produced no replicated datasets nor any first author manuscripts.

Personally, I prefer my supervisor's normally handsoff method. I want to work late hours and weekends to get him data. I like him. I like my postdoc. We have a fabulous relationship where I feel respected and not treated like a piece of shit or just a monkey.

However, when this piece of advise gets handed down, it translates to what feels like a panicked email from my supervisor wanting to meet with me so he can know what I'm doing. And this just makes me feel managed. When I feel managed I want to rebel.

The real problem is that I am the lab. I have two undergraduates and a lab technician that work directly under me. For almost a year now, I have been running the lab projects, supervising everyone, including Dr.Add'EmUp's PhD student, who did a stint in the lab. When it comes to describing the progress of our experiments, people ask me not him. And in the fall, when I was sick, the lab effectively shut down.

And so when I get an email from Dr.Add'EmUp wanting to meet with me to discuss every detail of my lab work, I feel resentful and micro-managed. In my performance evaluation two days ago, he said he was really happy that I was so independent. In fact, he claimed, that all the other faculty are jealous of him because he has such an independent postdoc (aside from HippieHusband).

So how do I balance my fierce need for independence while remembering that it's not MY lab but HIS even though for all practical purposes I am the lab?