Waste of Resources

...this is difficult for me to talk about. I'm chronically ill. I recently graduated with my PhD after 8 years in graduate school. I thought the best way to receive accommodations during graduate school would be to talk to the disabled students office–I was wrong. As a graduate student, because I was technically an employee, they could only help with accommodations for classes (which I ended up not needing accommodations for). I went to the office in charge of disabled employees, and they told me that because I was a trainee, I was technically a student, and that they couldn't help me with accommodations for lab. I spoke to my PI about it. He said it was fine, and I was so relieved! However, as graduate school went on, I saw that he didn't actually have faith in me. I was taken off my project and it was given to someone else. He allotted less time and energy towards my new projects than other people's. My second year, I was experiencing a flare-up of one of my medical conditions that was so severe, I had to be hospitalized.

While I was in the hospital, he told one of my labmates that I was a waste of resources. I thought about quitting, but I needed my health insurance. I spoke with the ombud, and they weren't helpful either–if they escalated, there was no way of keeping my issues with him confidential, given that I was only one of three graduate students in his lab. I feared retaliation. I kept pushing myself to continue with accommodations and often overworked myself. In some ways, the response to the COVID-19 pandemic helped me. The accommodations that I had wanted (the ability to work from home) were suddenly routine for everyone. This was also embittering because it showed that these accommodations were always possible. They just didn't want to give them to me. I did, eventually, finish my research, and defended during the pandemic. I started my postdoc a few weeks ago. I can't bring myself to ask my new PI about accommodations. I guess I'm just going to do my best to get by without them. I know I'm still burnt out from graduate school, and that this will probably just continue the burn-out. But once again, I need the health insurance that's afforded by my position to continue to function. I just hope I can keep scraping by and that someday things will get better but I'm very tired.

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Thank you to the anonymous author for sharing their story.