Dear Majo,

Lots and lots of hugs.
You were expecting support and instead you feel that you got clobbered / hit.
It would take me a little while to recover from an event like this. Go do things that revive you: sleep, walk, get back to the lab, or take a day off from the lab, . . . whatever works for you.

You can recover. The fact that your boss is advancing you in the program through these steps shows that she believes in you and your work.


Your boss should have sent you to some other presentations before you did one of your own. You would have known what to expect.

None of what was happening was about you or your experiments. It was about other people and part of a process.

Research needs to be presented and shared (written and orally and otherwise). You did that. You can practice answering stupid questions because you will get more of them in the future. You can learn to answer a question without directly answering all of it. You can use words that show you are listening and still in control of the room.


Majo, If you want to be a psychologist, switch now or later. You would be good at that. . . . . but you know that the work is totally different and requires a different skill set.
From your description of what happened Monday, I can see that you did a good job. The problem is that you can't see that you are doing a good job.

M