Ah, the bonds that we lab scut monkeys form. Societal lines blur and disappear as we perform endless meaningless lab scutwork together—grad student, “secretary” (aka major professor’s personal bitch), and lab assistant—those titles are all surpassed by the bonds of lab scut monkeydom. So it’s hard to see one of us go because we’ve come to care for each other and because that just leaves all the lab scutwork to only two lab scut monkeys. But we’re also happy to see our fellow lab scut monkey escape lab scut monkeydom and move on to greener pastures. It gives us hope that we will also one day escape the confines of lab scut monkeydom. Well, my other fellow lab scut monkey will also be escaping soon enough, leaving just me.
I know I’ve been in the lab way too long when I’ve lost count of the people who have come and gone. I wonder who will be the next victims of my major professor’s empty promises and bloated narcissistic ego. He’s already found one for secretary lab scut monkey, who I admire for staying as long as she did with the way he treated her and especially for standing up to him. This whole standing-up-to-unreasonable-major-professor thing was apparently contagious as all of us lab scut monkeys caught it, leading my major professor to make sure that new secretary lab scut monkey is as submissive as submissive can be. He even gave up on the (rather ridiculous) requirement that his secretary lab scut monkey have a science background just to have the submissiveness, which just goes to show that submissive trumps anything.
But I think he will still be in for a rude awakening. Even the most submissive person, after putting up with his overly inflated ego and all the crap that comes with it for a long enough time, will turn un-submissive. That’s what happened with the original secretary lab scut monkey and with me (I just took a lot longer). There’s only so much that we will do for someone as ungrateful and full of himself as him. Until fellow remaining lab scut monkey and I escape lab scut monkeydom, we’re going to sit back (with our chips and soda) and watch it happen with new secretary lab scut monkey.