Dear Rewt,

Thank you very much for your response! It is very nice and eye-opening to hear from other people what they and others do, because at the moment I do not communicate much with other students due to shift working and social distancing, and because I am relatively new here I have not managed yet to make any contacts or friendships. So I am entirely focused on what my group tells me is ok, right, correct and what not... I will try to talk to someone at the department confidentially :)

I am in the process of trying to communicate to my supervisor that sometimes I get tired and I cannot manage to accomplish my daily and weekly plans (as we have a weekly plan that we revise together every Monday...). But they seem to act a bit disappointed when I do less than expected or when I say I am tired and things will take longer time. Your advice about the work is good, I will try working more wisely! Many thanks again for your response!!

Hi Em89, thanks for replying! What do you mean mediate... like someone else try to explain how i feel/ what is the situation/ ? I could speak to pastoral tutor but I worry that the PI can take it the wrong way - that I am complaining or something... I worry too much!

Hi there
I am a first year PhD student and I am feeling a bit frustrated and confused about my relationship with supervisor and post-doc of my group. Here it goes:
I have a feeling that things in the lab are not exactly fair and I have been used as a working horse. I am not sure what my so-called 'duties' are as a student and how I am supposed to behave - do I speak my mind (without being rude) to my lab members (PI and post-doc) or do I agree with what they say because I am at the bottom of the hierarchy as a student? Due to Covid we have these shifts, and I have 6 hours to work per day until 8 pm (plus saturday or sunday) and this even without a break is not nearly enough for what I have to do. I am currently living alone and in a big city so I don't feel super confident to commute after 8-9 pm or later. I have tried to explain that to PI but they still say that other people stay until 11 pm so I need to consider doing something about it. So at the moment I am basically working entirely on my own (PI does not come very often to the lab) - I have to write protocols about things I have never done before, I have to troubleshoot and find things on researchgate because when I ask my group they are either busy and send me to google or they tell me exactly what to do, I do it, it doesn't work and then ask me what I did wrong. When I find something I think it is good to try according to what I have read - they usually say do not do it, it is a waste of time, do as we tell you. On top of everything, PI and post-doc are busy re-writing an article at the moment, so post-doc does not come to work (it is been close to 3 weeks now). Whatever there is to do, I have to do it - no matter whether it is or not at all linked to my project. After all, 'we are a team and we have to support each other'.
Another a bit weird thing is that my PI was unhappy I am going home for Christmas because due to quarantining I will be away a bit too long (about a month), and the start of my phD until now i have had 5 days off total. So they tried to use the ' I wouldnt do it, if I were you, I used to work over Xmas holidays in my previous lab' but I did not back down and after all I am going home for the holidays. But now the problem is I have about 5-6 weeks left before my break, and PI wants me to do as much work as possible, so I am working weekends as well. It is just all a bit of a fog, I just keep asking myself is there something wrong with all this or am I just lazy and self-centred and I am imagining things?
When I meet with both of them in person, they behave like the world is a happy place, we eat cake, and pretend everything is beautiful. I have tried to speak to PI once but they didn't give me the chance to actually speak. Now I am worried that if I say how I feel they will hate me and start doing mean things on purpose. If someone could give me feedback, how this all sounds, because I feel I am going mad lately. Thanks a lot!