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Competitive colleagues?
I'm in Montreal and have been super busy with meetings and writing and actually making some progress. It is so nice to see people I'm not related to!
But, one of my fellow PhD students just spent an hour digging for info into my life. Everything from my baby-making schedule to job hunt to my relationship with my husband and how we're organizing our home. This is fairly standard for her, and other, people I'm in school with. It's a very competitive atmosphere and everyone wants to know everyone else's business and compare where they are to where you are. Nonetheless, it's been a while since I've been around these people and I'm fairly unnerved by the whole thing. (Especially since she tried to make me feel bad about not having a job lined up yet.)
Is it like this in real jobs too? Are your colleagues super competitive and nosy?
October 2013 February Siggy Challenge: Valentine's Day Fail
EDD 10/3/13
Re: Competitive colleagues?
Errr she's a freak. Why would she care about your baby making schedule?
Competitive- yes as I like to be the best.
Zee, maybe it's a grad student thing? Because seriously, I see it all the time. The usual list:
-- Who's getting married/started a new relationship/having kids? Are you buying a house? A condo? In what neighborhood? What did you guys do this weekend/for the holidays/on vacation (usually followed with "How do you have time for that - don't you have work to get done?")?
-- How's your thesis coming? Have you read this book? What did this professor say? What did that professor say? How many pages is it? What does your chapter structure look like? Did you hear that ________ is working on a similar topic?
-- What non-class related projects are you working on? Are you doing creative writing? Are you doing non-writing related projects (outside research, etc.)?
-- Are you going to PhD programs? Which ones? When are you applying? What's on your CV? Did you sign up for more conferences? Are you trying to get published? What were your test scores?
-- Where are you interviewing for jobs? What jobs do you have? Who do you know there? How did you get it?
Etc. etc. etc.
On the one hand, most of it is polite conversation. On the other hand, if you've ever been a graduate student, you realize that it's just a hyper competitive place, particularly for those of us who are planning on leaving here for PhD programs and/or teaching jobs -- our friends/colleagues in the program are going to be our immediate competition, especially if they're working on/writing in a similar focus field.
The personal questions and "competition" I think comes from a variety of factors. My program is pretty diverse in terms of age, experience, "place in life," etc. I mean, seriously, we have a 22-year-old right out of his bachelor's program sitting next to a 48-year-old mother of six. The diversity is joyous on the one hand, but on the other hand it does add a weird sense of pressure. If we're all at the same place "academically," how can we be at such different places in "life"? So, the young newlyweds living in a small apartment get jealous of the even younger single girl who just bought a fabulous condo, the mother-to-be is jealous of the dad who's kids just went off to college themselves, the University lecturers are jealous of the Community College tenured professors...and the list goes on and on. It's a petri dish of pressure -- I think it's a natural result (kinda like Penicillin).
Reading the sample questions was so right on with what happens here. Especially the "how do you have time for that?" Asked in a sweet way that's full of amazement, but is really judgy. It is weird to be colleagues/friends/confidants with people who are also your competition. (The particular grad student I was speaking with today shares the same committee and sources of funding as I do and we've always had a very strange relationship.) We compete for funding, attention from supervisors (today The Jerk (I can't remember the other nickname I gave him) interrupted a meeting with her to meet with me), lab time, everything.
And that was the point of my post - is it just grad school or is every work environment this competitive? This is just part of my current should I stay in academia or not dilemma. I'm just so confused career-wise!
October 2013 February Siggy Challenge: Valentine's Day Fail
EDD 10/3/13
I believe that is also part of the unique "honor" of being a graduate student, because I've been asking myself that SAME question EVERY DAY this week! (and by "this week" I mean "since August").
Oh, I can't wait 'til I'm out. I can't stand it. I used to want to be a professor but my program has driven that desire right out of me.
I will do what I need to do to finish this year (which is the last year of classes anyway), but starting this spring I am applying to get my old teaching job back for the summer and the next school year. There is no shame in doing something you are good at and love and get paid decently to do. If I want to work on the dissertation evenings and weekends, just for the sheer joy of writing the letters PhD after my name, I may.
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This was my life in undergrad. I went to an incredibly competitive, well-known business school in the Boston area. The big 4 accounting firms recruit solely through my college and everyone tries to get a job with them.
Once Thanksgiving break was over and people returned to school all anyone talked about was who they got interviews with, where they were moving, if they were renting or planning to buy, what they were expecting to make as a starting salary, etc. I went to school with some ridiculously rich kids whose parents mostly bought them houses right out of college if they thought they could afford the mortgage payments.
I really think when you're surrounded by people that you can compare yourself to it's tough to not to ask what they are doing and use their milestones to compare to your own. (Although I do thing the chick you mentioned got a little personal with the baby making stuff.)
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