Growing Up Overnight

We didn't really see it coming. There were small hints, but nothing that we took seriously enough. My boss had told me just two weeks ago that his annual meeting with the department chair was coming up and he was 99% sure that he'd receive the funding to keep me another year and that he would fight tooth and nail to keep me. He was very reassuring, but still wanted me to know that this was a very distant possibility. Mostly for fun, the three of us in the lab started having secret conversations about whether or not one of us was going to have to leave and what we'd do and we weighed the pros and cons of keeping the tech vs the grad student vs the postdoc. The day before his meeting our boss spent a lot of time reconciling every penny of our current spending and while this made us a bit more nervous, it wasn't particularly unusual the day before a budget meeting. When our boss got out of his meeting the next day he left work for the day immediately. This was certainly a sign that he was unhappy - but it still wasn't a sign of what was to come. We convinced ourselves that if he was going to have to let any of us go he would have done it right away. After all, how fair was it to be all dramatic and run out of work leaving us to wait to hear that we didn't have jobs? We still didn't quite see it - in hindsight, maybe we were protecting ourselves.

The next morning our technician told me that the boss looked absolutely horrible when he came in, but he was in another lab until at least 11:30 and so we'd have to wait. I can't quite describe the atmosphere in here. We were beyond wound up, but I still don't think we saw it coming. He came back to the lab to return something to his bench and then left the lab - I relaxed a bit. If it was coming, he would have done it then. And so I went to eat my lunch. 5 minutes later the student came to find me and said "The Boss will be looking for you. I know what it's about, but I'm not telling you, I just wanted to warn you. He's got The Tech now." My blood turned to ice and I couldn't eat anymore. I was convinced that I was the one being let go - the student hadn't been in his office long enough to have had the breakdown that certainly would have come if it had been her. I waited 5 minutes more and then went back to the lab. Our tech was already back - and completely calm. I new at this point that it was me. She looked at me and said "Remember to breathe." Oh God. It took another 20 minutes for the boss to come and get me and during that time my blood pressure skyrocketed and I couldn't stop shaking. I was miserable there, just waiting - although I think the wait prevented my boss from having to see the great meltdown.

I was only in his office for maybe 60 seconds. He told me as quickly as possible and I ran away as quickly as possible. Knowing it wasn't just me but also our tech and essentiall our boss who's jobs and careers were over as we knew them made it much worse. I IMed my husband and cried, but not as much as I thought. Mostly I turned into a zombie. I was exhausted suddenly and felt absolutely nothing. Literally, nothing. My boss came into the lab and asked me a question about an experiment that I'm doing - I answered his questions while fighting back and very bitchy "You just told me I'm done with this job in 4 months and you want me to talk about science with you?!?" I finished what I had to do for the day and left at 3:30.

I was fine when I was alone. It wasn't until my husband got home and I actually had to talk about how it had happened that I lost it. It just made me sad. And then, once I'd gotten that out of my system, I felt nothing again. I still don't quite feel anything. The only time I feel something is when I realize that my time working with these people is much closer to ending than it should be and then I get sad again. When I walked in to the lab the next day I chatted with our tech and we both agreed that it was worse than the night before. We were both exhausted. I said I felt much older on this morning than I had when I walked in the morning before. Our tech agreed and said she thought we kind of grew up overnight. I agreed and and she even suggested that maybe that wasn't a bad thing. "You're right" I agreed. It was pretty obvious that neither one of us thought that was true.