Thank you for sharing your thought.

To believe or not, I was very close to her before all started. To be honest with you, I have no idea why she picks me as target..

Initially I've thought of talking to her academic advisor but decided not to do so. Because it is hard to provide the evidence of her hostile behavior, and it is much harder to prove how her ostracism makes target (it's me this time) miserable. She is sly enough not to harass me when others are around, and she is very polite to professors. Other people in the room are not comfortable with her because she does not talk to me and try to pressure others not to talk to me, but that is not enough to bring up concerns to higher up. She could simply deny all allegation and defense herself like there is nothing wrong with not having lunch / being friends with me. She is super-good at manipulation. I and other people in the office all agreed that talking to advisor could make things worse. One person who chose to study in the library worries reporting to the department head could make us look bad and even hurt our reputation. Some people may think we did something wrong to make her upset. Sometimes, I wish she punches on someone's face instead of displaying crazy passive aggressive behavior then we could prove her psychosis by showing bruise from her.

Yes, it is very tricky to deal with this psycho woman and she seems to be expert on playing game. Good thing is that I don't need to (and not going to) work with her. My major is social science. Abusive girl and I study the same field, but we have different academic advisors. In my field, Phd students rarely co-work with other students. Plus she has only one more year to stay in the office. It is our program policy that PhD students are allowed to have office space for maximum 10 semesters whether students graduates or not.

Manager? Do you mean academic advisor?

FYI, my program provides office space for all individual PhD students for research purpose. Everybody gets individual desk and bookshelf and 5-6 people share the room. We call it "office." Since we are all PhD students we don't have "manager" who supervises us, and academic advisor wouldn't involve this.

I chose to leave her alone and focus on my research. Hope she gives up some point..

Well, others sensed that she treat me as if I were invisible person. They asked her why she behaved like that, and were responded that she felt threatened by my existence. Two felt very uncomfortable with her so they moved to the other room, while the other two study at library and very rarely stop by at office. Now, it's just me and her who stay regular at office.

Hi guys,

I have a new office mate with your-success-is-my-unhappiness attitude. Her slogan is "stop being a loser." She wrote that words literally her blackboard on the wall. She moved to my office on Feb, complaining that people at her all old office always got her nerve. I naively believed what she said. Well, now we know how lucky these five guys are to get rid of her.

It didn't take that long to show her real personality to us. For brief, making more achievement, she hates that person more. Very unfortunately her current target is me. She does everything to bother my studying whenever I am in the office. She behaves fine when others are around, but when I am alone at office, she keeps making constant noise, cursing, sighing deeply every one minute, answering phone loudly on purpose, banging the desk drawer, and talking to herself LOUDLY. She started this on May, when she found out I was preparing for grant proposal. Very luckily I won grant, and her aggression became just worse. While professors and my close friends congratulate my little victory, she slammed the office door in front of my face and began giving me silent treatment.

I asked her if there was anything that I made her upset, only to get her cold shoulder. Actually, we got along well until she found out my research grant thing. So first time I thought I can take care of conflict with her, but I was wrong. Now she is trying her best to get ally to give me silent treatment in a team. Two of office mates already moved to the other room because they could not tolerate her. I began ignoring her rudeness since there is nothing that I can do after her refusing to respond to my effort. I will keep trying my best to focus on my goal and keep moving forward no matter what others talk behind me, but she is so annoying.

Is it common thing in graduate school? What should I do?




FYI, my program provides office space for all individual PhD students for research purpose. Everybody gets individual desk and bookshelf and 5-6 people share the room. We call it "office."