When I decided to pursue my master’s degree, I knew I wanted to look beyond the borders of my own country. I found an incredible program at one of the top 100 universities globally, which seemed like the perfect fit for my ambitions. My ultimate goal was a PhD, so my master’s was just a stepping stone.
In the second year of my master’s, we had to select labs for our thesis work. I was strategic about this choice, aiming for a lab where I could not only complete my master’s but also transition into a PhD. I picked a new lab, thinking it would give me ample room to shine.
After finishing my master’s, I stayed on in that lab for my PhD. During my master’s, my interaction with the Principal Investigator (PI) was minimal, mostly filtered through my instructor. This meant I didn’t get a clear picture of her personality. I observed her interactions with others, noticing some sarcastic remarks now and then, which were somewhat confusing. She had a reputation for being quite demanding, but I chalked it up to the high standards of our prestigious university and academia in general.
Looking back, the red flags were there from the start, though I missed them during my master’s. It was still the time of COVID, and we were gearing up to publish a paper. My PI, always in a rush, was pushing people to conduct experiments during lockdown, casually remarking, “We’re all going to die anyway.” That was supposed to be comforting, I guess.
At that time, I was working under a postdoc who was overseeing the project. There seemed to be a communication breakdown between him and our PI, or perhaps he was just doing what he thought was best. He had me running experiments, and when things went south, I was the one who caught the flak. Suddenly, I was the irresponsible one, accused of wasting resources and time, all that while conducting experiments on Christmas Eve.
As the years went by, the situation didn’t improve; it actually deteriorated. Her outbursts became more frequent. She was texting us around the clock, literally 24/7. We knew this was somewhat common with demanding PIs, but with her, it became an obsession. One Sunday morning, I was still asleep when she called me at nine. I didn’t answer, so she called my colleague to check if I was okay.
She also had this habit of sending texts on Friday afternoons about experiments she knew weren’t done, just to make us feel guilty over the weekend or coax us into going to the lab, which was often the case. There were numerous times she was convinced she had instructed us to do something when she clearly hadn’t, leading to scoldings and name-calling so harsh, I’ve blocked most of it out. She’d knock on tables with objects or even throw things in fits of frustration.
Going out for dinner, getting dressed up, or having painted nails were all triggers for her, leading to a barrage of inappropriate comments on a daily basis. Because how come we have time to have life? Aren’t we just a slaves?
There was this one lab meeting where everything just escalated. She was arguing with everyone, trying to prove a point that was impossible to prove, and then she turned on one of my colleagues. She started calling her names, hurling insults right in front of the entire team. The situation got so bad that my colleague had a panic attack; she was suffocating. In the midst of this chaos, our PI threw the chalk across the room and stormed out, leaving us to help our distressed colleague.
That was the moment we all realized this had gone too far. By then, we were all in psychotherapy, trying to deal with the stress and toxicity of our work environment, but things were only getting worse. We decided we had to do something, so we went and reported her. But that’s a story for another time because there’s much more that unfolded after that.