Day 140: A meeting with my PI

Tools of the trade, an EEG cap I set up for my experiment

With the term about to start (we get another week, even though some schools are already kicking off), I have a few things that I need to do prior to the start. One of those things was make more work for myself, no really. I made a few emails between my two PI’s (which sounds like a TV show) and arranged for a meeting.

Why am I meeting with the two of them? Well mostly because for the past three months I’ve been trying to coordinate and manage expectations between the two of them… and I’ve failed miserably.

Having two PI’s means needing to coordinate between two very busy people. Unfortunately, it also means having two people who are used to being in charge giving me things to do without (somewhat) regard for the other person. Or more aptly, not giving me things to do that I would want to do, or learn, or be a part of, because they don’t know if they are both in agreement.

So I’ve got a meeting today with my PI, my main PI. We are going over my proposal for my PhD dissertation, another major milestone I need to hit this year. Then near the end of the week (still to be determined) we are meeting as a group to make sure I can learn from my Co-PI without stepping on my PI’s toes so to speak.

I’ll be honest people, it’s like herding cats. People cancel on you, people forget you’re meeting with them, people get busy, etc. However, this is something I need to wrangle so I can get the most out of my PhD. My Co-PI is in a clinical lab and does a lot of very cool things that I want to learn!!!! The bottom line is that I’m very excited for the chance, but the more time that goes by without organizing and managing the expectations of the two of them, the longer I’m stuck in limbo, and the less time I have to learn all the stuff I want to learn.

To be clear, I still have ~4 years or so left to my PhD. I mean, I’m really just getting started, I’ve only done 1 year and 3 months of it so far, so I’ve got time, but that doesn’t change the fact that there is (hopefully) a limited amount of time so I want to learn all I can. I want to get the most out of this experience. I want to see things from the clinical side and learn how to do some of the things they do.

So today is my first (of two) meetings. With luck, it will be a good start to getting everyone on the same page. Despite the whole war thing going on in the background, I’m hopeful that from an educational perspective it will be a good year.