PI made me cry and I think that will make things worse
Hi all., here’s some context : I’m an undergrad doing research with my professor who is also my pi. They tend to yell at people a lot but it’s usually not with ill intent, they just kind of get loud and are very blunt about correcting people. The department has pretty much no money.
In summation what happened was my PI gave me a very strict time constraint to do my work because they were planning on leaving early. They yelled at me about a small issue, which then made me really panicky and because I was also rushing I ended up making a much larger mistake. My PI yelled at me, told me I didn’t know how to work, and that I need to think. I started crying even though I really didn’t want to. For clarification, I was pouring plates which I have done fine for the past semester and a half, this is the only time I have messed them up to the point where they may not be usable. PI yelled at me for wasting the department budget. I am now no longer allowed to pour plates unless my PI or her student employee are directly monitoring me. My PI is the department head, my advisor, and teaches almost every class for my major, they kind of heavily impact my future after undergrad. Leaving isn’t an option, but I don’t know how I can earn back trust after this. I guess I just wanted to se if anyone had advice for how to not cry when PIs yell at you? Sorry for the rant and if there are any mistakes in this
Update: thank you guys for all the comments, it’s nice to know that this isn’t really normal. I checked on my plates this morning and they were okay! About 2/3rds of them were very wonky and ugly, but usable for my purposes so yay! We had some younger kids touring the lab today so my professor grabbed some extras of other plates, and then some of my plates, which I’m not thrilled about since I have very limited time in the lab to do my research including making and pouring media, but also the plates were very ugly and weird so I can’t really be that mad about it to be real. My PI said “no hard feelings about yesterday” and then left before I could answer so I think it was more of a statement than a question. For as difficult as they are to work with, they are also very unintentionally funny sometimes. I’m going to try to adjust my mindset as some of you suggested so I can be more resilient to this type of thing!
Minor clarifications: I am in a really, REALLY small department, and currently there are no other functioning research labs on campus that take students from my major. There used to be, but the professor retired last semester so now it’s just my current PI who I can work for at my college. There is no one else besides my PI, and the 5 or 6 undergrad research students there, no lab techs of anything like that. Our research is also independent, which is part of why I feel so bad about her poor student employee who is also trying to do his own research, having to give up some of our very limited time just to monitor my plate pouring 💀