u/Difficult_Currency75

Guys i am genuinely confused in all of the CDs out there in immunology. I confuse them and I confuse myself. Is it by practice only or is there another way to stop being confused by all of these?

قريت كل كتب محمد طه و بجد كانت مفيده بس حاسه اني عايزه اقرا كتب تانيه اكتر في المواضيع دي.

فن اللامبالاه قريته بردك بس معجبنيش بصراحة

انا عايشه برا و بدرس كل حاجتي بالانجليزي فمليت بصراحة ياريت تكون اقتراحات كتب عربي علشان منساش اللغة . شكرا!

I am Female 23 yrs old
Throughout my life, I’ve felt like my family — especially my mother and her side of the family — never really liked me. I noticed it as a child. The favoritism was obvious. My sister, one year older than me, was always “the favorite.” When I look through old photos, I find only a handful of me but tons of her, and tons of the family with her. Even my grandmother favored her before she passed. My mother and aunts always described my sister as “the quiet one,” “the nice one,” “the one who’s been through so much.” I think that language shaped her into a victim mindset over time.

She’s 24 now and still depends on my mother for everything. She’s stuck in a self-sabotaging cycle — convinced she’ll never be successful, that she’s not attractive, that no one will ever love her. We’ve all tried to convince her otherwise, but nothing changes. Every job, every team she’s part of, she says they hate her. There’s a new “I’m the victim” story almost daily. She is ( i think) smart. She is an engineer, which is a top school in my country ( only for top 10% high GPA in mathematics division) . When she got in, she just became sad somehow and denied she is happy. She was like “ oh i am still a loser. I will fail” and again everyone was just surrounding her comforting her.
Maybe she really is going through hard things. I don’t know anymore. But at this point, I’ve stopped trusting her account of things.

My mother still clearly prefers her over me. I left the country at 19 for school. My sister stayed. Now she says things like “you get to live your life, lucky you,” “I wish I could travel too” — but she’s never actually tried to build toward that herself. She says “ you don’t know how much i try and it never works out,” but i see her working 2 hrs in the day and the rest on the bed reading a book unless she has a deadline. I guess she could use such a time in trying to find a way to leave the country? She frames things so she’s the one suffering and I’m the spoiled one, and my mother subtly reinforces that. When I push back, my mother denies she meant it that way.

I come from a poor family with a poor education system. I got myself a scholarship through sheer grinding — years of running on two hours of sleep — to study in the US. My life there isn’t easy either; I’m an international, low-income, first-gen student. But every time I visit home, they treat me like I’m coming back from a vacation resort. My sister has literally compared my life to a resort stay. When I try to defend myself, my mother starts crying, hits her head against the wall, and says my sister and I are a disgrace after everything she fought through to raise us. This exact cycle repeats every time I disagree with anything.

Financially, whenever my sister wants something expensive, my mother asks me to chip in — even though I’m a low-income work-study student barely surviving on my own income. When I say I don’t have the money, she accuses me of humiliating her, implying I’m just being stingy. She’s even asked me to borrow money from a friend to cover a completely optional course for my sister. These aren’t old wounds — this is recent, ongoing stuff.

Whenever I try to defend myself or point out something specific, they deflect. My mom insists she’s always treated us equally. When I push back with actual examples, I’m told I’m being delusional, trying to stir up trouble, or looking for reasons to fight. No matter how calmly or clearly I lay it out, the response is the same. I keep wondering — if she says “we treat you equally” that often, does that mean it’s true? Or is it just something she’s repeated so many times it feels true to her?

I suggest that my sister goes to therapist. She said “ hahha no it will not work i will always be a loser”

My father, meanwhile, is a lost cause. He has anger issues- doesn’t get physical tho— he screams and verbally abuse us.

I still love my family; there are still some good moments ( only when my sister is in good mood, which is rare). But somehow, i now feel more hate or resentment than love. Its always gloomy to sit with them and lonely.

So I don’t know. Am I the one acting like a victim here, or is this actually as messed up as it feels? What do I even do at this point? I’ve cared so much for so long. I don’t think I’m the problem, but maybe I am. Would appreciate insights

Sorry for the long post , but it has been so much on me :( appreciate your advice

Hey everyone! I’m a student looking for a debit card or banking app that lets me divide my money into categories right inside the app.
For example, if I have $1,500 total, I want to be able to allocate $1,000 for rent, $250 for shopping, and $250 for food so I don't accidentally spend my rent money and can track my spending easily.
Does anyone have recommendations for apps or banks that offer this feature ? Thanks!

I am stuck in a heavy emotional loop and really need perspective on how to snap out of it.
I had a guy friend who originally approached me to be study partners when he was a senior and I was a junior. He actually captured my attention a full year before he ever reached out to me because I found him extremely attractive, which is very rare for me—I am not someone who gets attracted to men easily. When we finally connected, he became my main go-to person at school. We were shockingly similar in our academic interests, and our brains aligned like crazy. We could sit and speak for hours about science and research. However, outside of work, we almost never talked about our personal lives. I knew he was dating someone else at the time, but I didn't know details.

After he graduated, we lost touch for about five months, but reconnected because we were both applying to the same grad schools. We started talking again about work and applications, and around this time, I realized indirectly that he was already broken up. He never mentioned, but i realized that based on my obsessive analysis of him . Once he was single, I suddenly caught really intense feelings for him.
However, I started noticing how one-sided and strange the dynamic actually was. He would bring up my LinkedIn posts in conversation and show curiosity about my academic achievements, but he would never actually react to or like my posts online, even though he actively liked and reacted to other people's stuff. He would ask about my university, my academics, or what I did during vacations, but never ask how I was actually doing as a person. Once he got the answer or information he wanted, he would just leave me on seen or go quiet.
I realized the dynamic was off and unhealthy, so the last time he reached out, I left him on seen and never responded. We have been completely no contact for about four months now.
Logically, I know I made the right choice to walk away, but it hurts so bad. I have liked men before and even obsessed over a few, but never like this. He feels like my "dream boy" and lives completely rent-free in my head. My brain keeps fantasizing that I'm going to run into him again somewhere in the future at a conference( and realistically, i will) and I feel like I can't control it. I am honestly fascinated and overwhelmed by how much my heart is willing to ignore all of his clear red flags and bad behavior just because of who he was to me.
I know I need to stop this, but I am struggling so hard to break the mental loop. How do you stop your mind from compulsively reaching for someone like this when logic isn't working?

Hey everyone,
I’m about to start my PhD program straight out of undergrad. While I do have research experience across a few different labs and got accepted into multiple programs, I am currently overwhelmed by massive impostor syndrome.
I’m the youngest person in my cohort, and I genuinely feel like I'm not ready for PhD-level work. My biggest anxiety right now is communicating science. Whenever I’m in a group and people start talking about research, I freeze up. I see others actively discussing, contradicting, and judging papers on the spot, while I just nod along and say, "Oh, that's cool," because I don’t feel confident enough to engage with their science.
On top of that, reading literature is still super slow and difficult for me. It feels like everyone else reads fluently and digests papers effortlessly, while I’m struggling just to get through them. If i am asked a creative question in my own research, id struggle to answer. I am not that well aware of the other experiments thag i didn’t run - so if they are talking ablut techniques i never used, i would not know it. I keep telling myself that maybe I’m just not built for this, that I got lucky with admissions, and that I'm going to fail.
Is this a normal feeling to have at the very beginning of a PhD? Will I ever actually reach a point where I can read and write papers quickly, hold my own in heavy scientific discussions, and feel confident in the room?
I feel like a loser , and i am so scared it never gets better . everyone else is lightyears ahead of me. Any advice or reassurance from people who started right out of undergrad or struggled with this early on would mean a lot.

I just had a meeting with a potential rotation professor, and I’m feeling really discouraged and second-guessing everything.
I talked about my previous research experience, though I admit I talked really fast and kept it pretty brief (not in huge detail like I usually do in official interviews). I really just mentioned the problem, the hypothesis, what to do, and what is the result. I didn’t delve into teh techniques . I had also read up on his lab's recent papers and brought up a question, though I stumbled a bit and didn't explain my thoughts as perfectly as I wanted to.
Throughout the meeting, he didn't speak that much about his own research. Then, right at the very end, he dropped the bomb that he might not even be recruiting PhD students for his lab this cycle.
I’m genuinely disheartened and spiraling a bit. Why wouldn't he just say that in his initial email response? Why accept the meeting, hear me "yap" about my research, only to tell me that at the end?
I’m terrified that he actually is recruiting, but he just hated how I spoke about my research or how I answered his questions, and used the "not recruiting" line as a polite way to turn me down.
Has anyone else experienced this? Is it normal for professors to take rotation meetings when they don't even have funding or spots open, or did I just completely blow it?

Hi all, i am having a thick curly hair. Probably 3a/3b. My hair is coarse. I usually iron it, but i moved to a pretty humid city and my hair is getting pretty frizzy. I want any tricks on how to prevent that. I tried color wow but it didn’t work.

I don’t mean drifting apart in the sense of talking less. I mean something else — my family and I still talk, but they don’t get what my life actually looks like.
Every time I go back home, I get comments about how my life is so much better than theirs since they’re in a poor country in which i lived in almost all of my life by the way and I’m in the US now. What gets erased every time is that I got here completely on my own merit. I’m low-income, first-gen, and an international student trying to navigate the job market, internships, my education, a social life, culture shock, and getting sick while alone with barely any real friends (most of the “friends” I have here are pretty surface-level).
At one point they compared a my life in the US to a resort vacation, like I was living some easy, glamorous life. When I pushed back and said that’s not what’s happening, I got “sorry you’re struggling, we know it’s hard” — but it never feels genuine. It feels like something said to close the conversation, not something said because they actually sat with what I told them.
I don’t even want constant acknowledgment of how hard things are. I just don’t want to be quietly measured against them and lose every time, like struggle only counts if it happens in a “worse” country. I’m out here handling financial stress, social isolation, academic pressure, and health issues I can’t afford to deal with properly — and somehow that all gets flattened into “must be nice, different country”
Dude, I don’t get a penny from them. I’m fully relying on myself — work study, trying to keep a 4.0 GPA, no financial safety net. I’m starting my PhD soon too, so the stress scale is only going up from here.
Anyone else dealt with this? Not a communication gap, but an understanding gap. What should i do? It is getting on my nerves and i feel that my family can’t understand how hard i try. I stand carrying my life all alone

I keep having people in the tech space come up to me and say stuff like, "Oh, just wait, in a few years your work will be completely done by AI." Then they always hit me with the advice: "You need to pivot and get involved in AI medical stuff." To be honest, I think this narrative is diabolical and just fundamentally untrue.
I’ve worked with computational tools before, and the reality is that they always have to be backed up and validated by wet lab work- most turn up to be wrong.When it comes to developing drugs and running clinical trials, it should be done by humans, not robots or algorithms. You can't just simulate complex human biology flawlessly without real-world, physical verification. And i know in fee years, it will be so damn smart for ai and they will be capable of doing many things, but i refuse to think it will replace us?
Beyond the science of it, there's a personal side to this too: I actually like manual work. I like using my brain and using my hands in tandem. I don't want to spend my entire career staring at a screen managing prompts.
It feels like a lot of tech people don't actually understand what goes into biological validation or the ethical necessity of human-driven medicine.
What do you guys think about this? Are you seeing this same pushy attitude from the tech sector, and how do you actually see the balance between AI and wet lab work panning out in the real world?

I’m joining a PhD program straight from undergrad this fall, and I’m already freaking out about the qualifying exam next year.

I still find it hard to read papers sometimes — it takes me way too long. I don’t feel like I have a solid grasp on all the core immunology concepts yet. I am really still confused between the many subtypes of T cells . I did research in undergrad, but it was on a pretty narrow topics compared to the breadth I feel like I need now.

The idea of standing in front of my committee, presenting a proposal, and defending it under questioning terrifies me. I’m scared of failing and losing everything I’ve worked for.

What should I actually be doing this summer to prepare? Am I overreacting, or is this a normal amount of panic for someone going straight from undergrad into a PhD?

I thought I knew exactly what I wanted in a lab. Now I'm spiraling during phd rotations and I don't know if I'm being picky or just scared.

I've been in 4 lab before phd. Different environments, different styles, different fields. I KNOW what I want. Or I thought I did.

What I want is someone who's present when I have questions, but also gives me the space to drive my own ideas and bring them to the table. Not a micromanager, not someone who disappears. Is that hands-on or hands-off?? I genuinely don't know where that falls and it's messing with my head.

Now I'm figuring my first rotation and everyone told me to just talk to the students in the labs .But every single person I talk to is clearly not comfortable being real with me. They either say the PI is hands-off or hands-on and that's it- they answer the questions but they are vague.No detail. No honesty. I get it — I'm a stranger asking them to talk about their advisor — but it leaves me with nothing.

And then I start spiraling. I see a lab where two students joined in 2019-2020 and still haven't graduated — I panic. I see fewer publications than I expected — I panic. I feel a slightly off vibe from one student — I don't even want to rotate anymore even if everything else seems perfect.

Am I being too picky? Is this normal? How did you actually figure out if a lab was right for you when everyone's being guarded and nothing looks perfect on paper? Rotation is a reason to figure this out , but everything is nicer during rotation and i am scared to be through another toxic lab since i had a previous traumatizing experience . I would appreciate any advice or input

So I’m a PhD student moving to a new city and I just applied for an apartment. The landlord uses Nova Credit to check your checking account balance and… I have $26 in there right now because I was moving.

The thing is, I submitted proof of my PhD stipend starting in September AND I have a move-in grant coming in August but not stated in the stipedn. I even messaged the agent to give her a heads up about the balance before she saw it.

But I’m still spiraling lol. Has anyone been in a similar situation? Did you get approved? Do landlords care more about future income or current?

Please tell me I’m not cooked 🙏

I’m starting my PhD soon and beginning to reach out to professors about potential rotations. I’m not fully sure what these emails are supposed to look like, and I’d appreciate advice.

Right now, I usually email PIs by briefly introducing myself, mentioning my broad research interests, saying that their lab seems aligned with those interests, briefly summarizing my relevant experience, attaching my CV, and asking whether they are taking rotation students and would be open to meeting.

However, I don’t deeply tailor each email to their specific research because I’m still trying to explore different areas and figure out what I’m interested in. Even if it is close to my research, i try not to make the email very long. I also haven’t received many responses yet, and I’m wondering whether that is normal or whether my emails need to be more specific.

I’d also appreciate advice on what to expect in these meetings. If a PI discusses possible rotation projects, am I expected to already know their papers well? Or is it okay to come in with a general understanding of the lab and use the meeting to learn more about what they are currently working on?

Any advice on how to approach rotation emails, follow-ups, and initial PI meetings would be really appreciated.

In my freshman year, during my very first research experience, I ended up in what I can only describe as an abusive lab environment.

Despite working incredibly hard, becoming independent, and consistently bringing in data, both my PI and my direct mentor seemed to want me gone. I was the only non-Latino person in the lab at the time, and eventually it felt like they were both pushing me out by making the environment unbearable.

There were many incidents. At one point, I was given contaminated cells and later blamed for contaminating them myself. After I left, it was confirmed that the cells had already been contaminated. My work was dismissed, I was treated disrespectfully, and I was repeatedly put down. Every day seemed to bring a new reason to cry.

Eventually, I went to the department chair. He told me he would look into the situation, but my PI responded by making accusations about me that were simply not true. The chair believed her. Everyone in the lab seemed afraid to speak up.

In the end, I was fired. During that conversation, she told me I would never succeed anywhere and that I was a loser.

What made things even worse was that she was a new assistant professor and seemed terrified that I might continue reporting what was happening. She spoke to many professors in the department about me, and my reputation was damaged so badly that not a single lab at my university would take me afterward.

Since then, I’ve done well. I found research opportunities outside my institution, worked in labs at Ivy League schools during both the academic year and summers, and I’ll be starting a PhD at a top-10 program this fall.

Objectively, I know I proved her wrong.

But today something happened that caught me completely off guard. I was talking to a graduate student about a potential rotation PI, and something about the way she spoke reminded me so much of my former PI. I immediately felt overwhelmed and started crying. A wave of fear hit me that I haven’t felt in years.

I always knew freshman year affected me, but I thought I had healed. Looking back, I think I spent all my energy surviving and building my career rather than actually processing what happened.
I tried to reframe what happened for a long time. I told myself that this experience changed me for the better because it made me more aware, more resilient, and more mature. I tried to see it as a redirection rather than a setback. In many ways, I was genuinely grateful for it because it pushed me toward opportunities and places that I might never have reached otherwise. But lately, all of that perspective seems to have disappeared, and I find myself feeling the weight of it again.

Now that I’m about to start my PhD, all the worst-case scenarios are replaying in my head. What if I end up in another toxic rotation? What if I commit to a lab and the PI turns out to be like her? What if it happens all over again?

Therapy didn’t help much, and I think I’ve become extremely avoidant since that experience. I know this probably sounds more like something for a therapist than for r/labrats, but I’m wondering if anyone here has gone through something similar.

How did you move forward? How did you learn to trust PIs and labs again after a genuinely bad experience?
Might seem like i am overreacting, but what i put there were small pieces of the amount of verbal abuse i got.

I’m honestly so frustrated with trying to stay in a calorie deficit. Every time I start, I end up falling off after a few days. I’m not overweight (around 63 kg), but I’d like to lose some body fat and look more defined.
I’ve recently started going to the gym, and I know that diet is going to be a huge part of reaching my goals. My biggest struggle is cravings, especially for sugary foods. I also find tracking calories really overwhelming because I never know how many calories are actually in my meals.
I’ve tried looking for apps, but many of the good ones require a subscription. I’ve also used ChatGPT before, but I know it can’t always estimate calories accurately.
For those of you who successfully lost weight or stayed consistent with a calorie deficit:
How did you build the discipline to stick with it?
What was the easiest way for you to track calories?
How do you estimate calories in homemade meals?
Are there any free apps or resources you would recommend?
I’d really appreciate any advice because I feel stuck in a cycle of starting over and never making much progress.

Hi everyone,
I’m an incoming PhD student and I’m considering rotating in a new lab that I’m very interested in. If the rotation goes well, I could also see myself joining it for my thesis work.
One thing that gives me pause is that the lab is very new and currently doesn’t have a lab manager or technician. Because of that, the PhD students are responsible for managing their own mouse colonies, including breeding, maintenance, genotyping, and everything that comes with it.
I’ve never done mouse colony management before, so part of me thinks it could be a valuable skill to add to my toolkit. On the other hand, I’m worried about the time commitment. I’m joining a PhD program to do research, and I’m concerned about how much time colony maintenance could take away from experiments and other professional development opportunities.
I’m also wondering:
How many hours per week does mouse colony management realistically take?
What are the biggest pros and cons of being responsible for your own colonies?
Has anyone regretted joining a lab with this setup?
What happens if you want to take a vacation, attend conferences, or do a summer internship? How is colony coverage usually handled? I don’t want to ask other students who already have enough in their plate

I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have been in similar situations, especially in immunology or mouse-heavy labs. I already asked some students in the lab and they said it can be difficult or needs too much planning if u are running big experiments

I’m an incoming PhD student and will be meeting with current students in a lab that I’m considering joining. I already have a few questions in mind, but I want to make sure I cover everything important before making a decision.
So far, I’m planning to ask about:
The overall lab environment and culture
The PI’s mentorship style
Work-life balance and expectations
Whether students are allowed or encouraged to pursue biotech internships during the PhD
What other questions would you recommend asking current lab members?

I’m an incoming PhD student, and before starting the program, I talked with a professor to discuss potentially rotating in their lab. I have a meeting with one of the profs to discuss rotating with them further and their projects. I have not met yet, but we will in 2 weeks.

Since then, I’ve learned more about the other labs in the program and found several that may fit my research interests better. We only have a limited number of rotations, and I’m now worried that rotating in this lab mainly because I already spoke with the PI would mean losing the opportunity to explore a lab that may be a stronger fit.

The professor was very kind, and I don’t want to seem flaky, damage the relationship, or create a bad impression before I even start the program. At the same time, I don’t think I ever made a formal commitment to rotate there.

Is it normal to change your mind after an initial meeting about potential rotation projects? How would you communicate this respectfully to the professor?