Hey all,
I’m a master’s student in STEM working in a relatively small (8 people) lab. 5 of the people in the lab are master’s students. My lab partner (calling him Jay moving forward) and I are the only first year masters students, so we were assigned a project together.
Coming into this degree, Jay and I had very different goals in mind. I want to become a professor, and he just wasn’t ready to leave school so he started a master’s degree. As such, I was much more dedicated to our research than he was. I studied more, researched more, and worked harder than he did. I also did the majority (80-20) of the work on our shared project (which is almost done now). I don’t mind that we contributed unequally to the project because I was allowed to develop my skills in research.
My grades, resume, and presentation skills are also substantially better than his are. So I ended up getting scholarships that we both applied for while he was denied.
Both Jay and I are aware that I’m the better researcher, and he’s made it clear that he envies me. He says that I just learn faster and am more capable than he is. The thing is, I’m inclined to agree with him. I definitely do learn faster than he does. I’m a believer in the fact that everyone is born equal. What I have in learning ability he might have in social skills. So if we were to sum up all of our strengths and weaknesses, we’d end up at the same level. Unfortunately, this isn’t something that Jay is keen on believing.
Every time we receive grades, or present our data, or catch up during the lab’s weekly meetings, Jay will always mention how much slower he’s progressing compared to me. He’ll also complain about getting lower grades on assignments and presentations.
I tried divvying up the work more equally, but Jay just couldn’t keep up with work, school, and home issues, and we ended up having an argument about work allocation. Like I said, I don’t mind doing more work, but I don’t like that he gets jealous when I end up learning more about the field than he does.
We’re mostly friendly, but I know that he envies me pretty seriously. The most recent issue was a scholarship that I received. It’s a large cash scholarship totalling roughly $15,000 USD. We both applied, and there were 10 winners at our university. I was one of them, but Jay was not. I know the money would have made a big difference in his situation, so he was pretty upset to learn that I got it (he asked me, I wouldn’t have shared that I got it with him otherwise) and he didn’t.
I still have 4 semesters with Jay. We’re doing some field research as our next big project, and I would rather work with a friend than an enemy.
What should I do to make Jay feel less inferior and more like an equal?
Comments
>What should I do to make Jay feel less inferior and more like an equal?
Nothing. It’s very obvious you believe you are superior to him in this matter. His feelings are his problem but you making insincere and disingenuous attempts to assure him you don’t believe what you in fact do believe isn’t going to help anything.
Show him the courtesy and respect that you should show any colleague and let him feel whatever he wants to feel. As long as he doesn’t do anything inappropriate, it’s his problem to deal with.
Stop treating him like inferior?
I’d be curious to know what Jay thinks of OP.
Multiple faculty told me when I got started that they were not the one with the highest scores or the rockstar grad student of their program but the people who were aren’t even in academia anymore and they still are. Not only did they succeed in the long term, but they went onto get prestigious grants, positions, and now work with the biggest names in their field.
Sounds like you’re both very early in a masters program and while you may be sprinting ahead of “Jay” out of the gate, he may pass you later in the race. He may finish the race and place well, while you don’t finish at all.
Also you made a list of his perceived inadequacies and all the ways you perceive yourself to be superior in a post about how you think he is being insecure at you. Maybe stop treating it like a competition and be kind to the people around you, especially the person who is going to get your experience the most.
Also FYI I know another person who switched labs and took an extra year to graduate, and went straight into a TT position right out of graduation —no post doc, which isn’t the normal in our field. While the people they started with graduated on time and either left academia or went into postdocs.
Basically early success doesn’t mean much.
Thank you for all the feedback. I now see that I’m approaching the situation with the wrong mentality and from the wrong perspective.
I’ll keep my head down and focus on my work moving forward, and whenever Jay makes these comments, I’ll just take them at face value and move forward. So long as we’re both working towards the same goal, there is no need to try to quantify our differences.