My Not Forgotten Blog

Although it's been a long time since I posted anything here, I have not forgotten about my blog. A few things have happened since my last post.

The book: I left off with my boss giving me 7 days to write a book. Of course, I couldn't write a book in 7 days. At the end of those 7 days, I gave her what I had. She started screaming. She said she could write a book in 2 days and that she would write it. She said she would remove my name as first author and put me as a secondary author. She wanted everything, my chapter outlines, chapter drafts, grafts, tables, and pictures. It gets worse. The pictures were supposed to be confidential and we would need permissions in order to use them for anything. She said we didn't need permissions. I refused to give her the pictures. It turned into a nasty battle which ended up involving the university attorneys. I won that battle. I turned everything else over to her and went back to working on my other research project.

Lab and Teaching: I had the opportunity to start teaching as an adjunct at a local college. In the fall of 2012, I taught one class and I loved it. My boss wasn't at all happy about it, but she went along with it. So I did both teaching and working in the lab. For the spring 2013 semester, I had the opportunity to teach 3 classes. I knew that she would not allow me to teach in addition to working as a post-doc in her lab. She gave me an ultimatum, either teaching or the post-doc, but not both. I chose the teaching and gave her my letter of resignation. Then she begged me to stay in the lab until she could find another post-doc and so I agreed to work 20 hours per week as a post-doc while teaching elsewhere. I stayed for 3 months while she tried to find another post-doc. It was very hard due to her inability to control her emotions. I survived it, but with some damage. I started having nightmares, anxiety, and panic attacks. I don't feel entirely free yet because I have a manuscript to finish, but I just can't work on it right now.

Teaching: So right now I'm teaching as an adjunct. I love it, but I'm not getting enough hours and money to live on. A full-time teaching position opened up in the department that I am teaching in and I applied for it, but did not get selected for an interview. I had thought for sure that I would at least get an interview, but no, no interview. In a previous post, I had written that I suspected that I was experiencing age discrimination and that might be the reason that I still had no interviews or offers for a permanent position. Finally, I have evidence to suggest that is why I did not get an interview for this position. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do about this...file a complaint maybe.

I'm not sure that I have it in me to fight for anything anymore. I'm still dealing with the anxiety, and sadly I'm having some problems with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. These problems did not originate from working in the lab with the abusive boss, but have become greatly exacerbated by it. I'm pretty much dealing with these issues alone because I no longer have health insurance. There are a few low cost clinics in town and I have appointments at two of them for 3 weeks and 8 weeks from now. 

I feel really bad that I have spent so much time and money getting educated and no one will hire me for anything, even if I'm really good at it. My student loan is at 200K now and I have no hope of ever being able to pay it off and no hope of being hired anywhere anymore.

So this is my update on my life for the past year. I'm sorry that it's so depressing.

Oh and the book...she still hasn't finished it.