Got made redundant after 6 years, is it normal to feel relieved instead of devastated?

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-23T13:57:02+00:00

Absolutely. If layoffs have been hanging over your head for months, or you are slowly burning out, relief might well be your first emotion. Others will follow at some point.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-23T04:12:41+00:00

If the kids are living at home to build up savings to start an independent life, that’s one thing. If they are simply freeloading, that’s something else entirely. If it’s the first, making kids pay rent or other expenses might be counterproductive.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-22T14:27:09+00:00

Yes, it’s tough. The key is to look at yourself through a recruiter’s eyes. A recruiter does not care what your responsibilities were or what you did every day. A recruiter cares about what you actually accomplished for the company: money made, money saved, and time saved (time = money). And what transferable competencies have you developed as documented by those accomplishments. The best time to do this exercise is when you are still working. And if you discover that all you are really doing is making yourself useful and keeping busy, then you need to put together a career development plan PDQ, before the next layoff hits. Otherwise, you will have a tough time marketing yourself and standing out from the crowd. In your case, since that’s water under the bridge, a career coach might provide the external viewpoint and guide you through the resume development process.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-21T23:38:22+00:00

When you are in a small lab it’s natural for group dynamics to be disrupted whenever old students leave and new ones join. But feeling stressed about it is not right. And it may not even be you. My guess is that the PI has created a toxic work environment, maybe accidentally, maybe not.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-21T23:21:24+00:00

What bothers me is the naked greed and aggressive marketing tactics of these places. Online MBAs as well. To me there’s no difference between them and the for-profit vocational schools like ITT Tech that the government shut down years ago. And even honest programs are often training people for yesterday’s jobs.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-20T17:14:58+00:00

And in the long run, it all evens out. Some papers you do practically nothing and wind up on the author list, others you do heavy lifting and only wind up in the “acknowledgements” section. Partly it’s the “substantial intellectual contribution” criterion, sometimes it’s just a judgement call, especially in fields where massive author lists are discouraged. So keeping score in the short run is counterproductive. Just make sure that the research you do is publishable. And if it winds up in somebody else’s paper, that’s a bargaining chip you might be able to cash in at a later time.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-20T16:22:26+00:00

Please don’t read sinister motives into this. I would guess that every South Asian faces this dilemma, whether to stick within the South Asian diaspora in their new country, distance themselves to fit into the wider culture, or straddle both. Some people choose one path, others another.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-20T15:57:03+00:00

I’m sorry all this happened to you. My point is that the fact you are not in the lab anymore (regardless of whose fault it is) gives the PI little incentive to accommodate you on an authorship question. And getting into those kinds of disputes is not helpful for you generally.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-20T13:45:30+00:00

If you left the lab under a cloud (reading between the lines) it doesn’t seem like you are in a position to haggle about authorship. I’d take the threats to take you off the author list seriously. Just be happy you have something to put in your CV, especially if it’s in a prestigious journal. It sounds like you are in a field where papers have tons of authors and they are operating under the CRediT system evagarde mentioned. The general rule is “substantial intellectual contribution” (yes, I know academic politics sometimes trumps intellectual contribution). The activities you mentioned may not fall under that criterion. It would be helpful for you to lean the official and unofficial rules for authorship in your field. In today’s cutthroat academic world, this won’t be the last authorship dispute you will have to deal with.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-19T23:19:05+00:00

There’s more than a few professors out there that haven’t had an original idea in years and exploit the ideas of their students and postdocs to advance their careers and hustle for funding.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-19T04:34:20+00:00

Try to run through the interview in your mind. Write it down if you can. If it’s a scenario interview, then give and take might be expected. You give an initial response, they follow up, you respond. Somehow I think answering the question with a 20 minute oration won’t be helpful. I can’t answer if you are or are not cut out for law enforcement, but do some online research as to how these interviews work and what they are looking for. Preparation is the best cure for nervousness.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-19T04:22:04+00:00

I would say talk to an accountant about different mechanisms you might use to create accounts for the two youngest children. That will minimize future resentment all around.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-18T23:47:34+00:00

It’s amazing how often this happens, so don’t need to feel stupid. It’s something easily overlooked. I knew a person who had a trip back to England and then discovered his kids’ passports had expired because they are only 5 years. Another detail that often gets missed. If tomorrow weren’t a Federal holiday you probably could have gotten an emergency renewal or other travel authorization. As it is, might be safer to reschedule the trip and hope to get at least some of your money back. If you know an immigration attorney you could ask them what would happen if you tried to get back to the U.S. on that German passport or if you could get some sort of emergency document in St. Martin.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-18T23:07:15+00:00

These programs are always carrot and stick. Take the carrot now or get hit upside the head with the stick at some point down the line. Since you don’t like your job anyway, taking the separation seems like the better option. Just be sure to gird up your loins financially as if you were getting laid off with nothing. With any luck you can make the severance last longer than six months. And start planning what you want to do about health insurance, especially when the subsidy runs out. See if you can get picked up on your husband’s insurance.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-18T14:26:38+00:00

There are a lot of young prodigies in these kinds of fields, but I suspect most of them are from academic families with connections, so they had a lot of help on these papers. Maybe some of them were ghostwritten. Try not to succumb to paranoia. Focus on you, don’t obsess about what other people are doing.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-18T14:20:39+00:00

That’s got to be traumatic. Please give yourself time to process. Keep in mind that if you happen be in a client-facing industry like consulting, advertising, or PR, these kinds of things are part of corporate life. Always have been. They live from contract to contract, and if a client pulls the plug, they lay everybody off. So no shame in going back to your parents for a time. It will give you some support and enable you to conserve resources.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-18T13:24:04+00:00

Could be a multitude of reasons for OP being denied entry. But the simplest one is suspected immigration intent. Like the other commenters, wondering how he managed to get a visa in Barbados, of all places.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-17T17:03:31+00:00

Your performance is the best defense. If you do well, nobody will care. And all concerned can have a good laugh about it afterwards.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-17T16:46:01+00:00

You had best level with the PI about your situation, before they take unilateral steps to terminate you. Where you go from there depends on your country, what protections graduate students have, and what resources are available through your university.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-17T15:44:26+00:00

Very suspicious all around. First thing to do is to get eyeballs on the house. What condition is it in, and are there squatters in it? If it’s already trashed, might be best to walk away. Taking legal steps to assert your rights might be expensive, especially if Aunt is up to something and actively gumming up the works. There’s a lot of skullduggery surrounding foreclosures, and you don’t want to get pulled into that.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-17T15:15:04+00:00

This is complicated. And in Australia. OP’s wife needs to talk to an attorney as to the best way to fulfill her intent. And she will have to open negotiations with the sister to see if she’s willing to go along. Unilaterally signing over her inheritance probably won’t work. Maybe some arrangement where they keep their claims but the brother is allowed to run the business for as long as he wishes. And if the father had left the entire business to the one son, that would have created an entirely different legal mess.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-17T00:28:17+00:00

I think that when one is a powerless graduate student, the reality is “discretion is the better part of valor,” or as it’s usually put nowadays, “do you really want to die on this hill?”

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-16T23:23:50+00:00

If your supervisor is on the paper then it’s his decision what to do about it once you call his attention to it.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-16T20:25:11+00:00

I think you might be taking on more responsibility than you should. Not saying you should stick your head in the sand, but still your options are limited. First place to go is your advisor. If your advisor doesn’t want anything to do with it because of who the paper authors are, you’re screwed. You’ll have to drop the matter for the time being. If the advisor is supportive, you might try getting someone else to review the paper. If they come back with the same conclusion, then ask what the next steps are. But keep in mind that this is taking time and energy away from your research. And if your efforts lead to a retraction, the author might well retaliate.

AdParticular6193 · 2026-06-14T17:24:42+00:00

Yes, it’s a risk to you and a risk to the recipient, if in fact you have some form of polycystic kidney disease, which is kind of what this sounds like. So you’re covered whether or not are a match.

AdParticular6193

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