Are you slowly turning into your supervisor?
Old habits die hard – even when they’re someone else’s…
Sometimes I find myself hoarding plastic grocery bags in the kitchen cabinet or unplugging the toaster when I leave the house just in case it turns on and burns the place down. In these moments, I realise I’ve become just like my mother.
At other times, I find myself repeating lab suspicions or superstitions: ‘Hey, I don’t know if copper works, all I’m saying is that I’ve never seen it work,’ or ‘I don’t know if [shaking the sample/turning that knob/clicking that option/bubbling nitrogen] helps, but I always do it just in case…’. When I find that I don’t actually have a particular reason why I believe these superstitions, I realise that I’ve become just like my lab mentors.