Lab group culture

Over a month has passed, and I've slowly settled into my lab (slowly being the important word there). The adjustment to any new lab is sort of difficult--you have to learn how everything runs, what materials or equipment are for general use and what you should get for yourself, what space is "yours" and what is just space you're allowed to use when it's free, whom you should talk to in order to get what you need, etc. Then you add in the transition from a small liberal arts school to a larger tech school, then the transition from undergrad to grad, then the fact that the person whose work I'm taking over is gone, then the fact that it's summer and thus I didn't get a great introduction to the school to begin with, and it gets even more complicated.

It's an interesting change, going from my lab group there to my lab group here. My undergrad lab group did have one person who'd worked for the department the summer between his second and third years, but other than that, we were all essentially on the same footing and seniority level in the lab. We all settled into our workspace at the beginning of the schoolyear and all cleared out together in May. We asked each other questions, but we were generally all equally clueless.

Here, coming in clueless when everyone's got their own independent work, well, it's definitely different. Unsurprisingly, it's intimidating to be the new girl, and confusing. The fact that I arrived at a time when nobody was really expecting anyone new to show up sort of makes that worse, though I'm sure it'd be disorienting anyway. But at the same time, I think everyone remembers what it was like to start grad school, and when I get up the nerve to talk to them, they're usually quite helpful.

Something about everyone all having different expertises and different levels of experience helps in encouraging people to do favors for each other. Okay, I think I get the whole utility of a lab group, now.

Not that the department at TS is really terribly friendly outside of lab. A guy I knew from high school is in this research center, too; we share an advisor, though he's technically in a different academic department. He got here a year before me. I ran into him today and expressed my slight distress that I haven't made a single new friend here, other than being introduced to a few friends of an old friend of mine. He told me he hasn't made any friends since he moved here a year ago, either. That's encouraging in that I know it's not just me, and incredibly disheartening for my future prospects.

Oh, well. At least three people in my group know my name now! I have people I can ask my pesky questions about how TS and this department run.

-Jenn-