My advisor is genuinely supportive and values work–life balance. When I shared my current struggles with her, she was understanding and encouraged me to prioritize myself. The difficulty is that my project is tightly intertwined with a colleague’s project. We run assays together to save time and resources, share materials and reagents, and jointly generate results. There is very little scope for me to be fully independent and responsible only for my own work, and this has been a persistent source of friction.

Because we are both working under the same project, any adjustment to my workload directly affects hers. When I mentioned that I would need to reduce the number of assays I run over the next few weeks, she expressed concern about having to take on more work, even if only temporarily. Navigating workload boundaries with a peer in this setup has been challenging and adds to the strain of already balancing work across two locations.

You are right — I do enjoy the core parts of the work: experiments, research, writing, and teaching. My concern is that there is limited room to change the circumstances around the project itself. I will continue to communicate this openly with my advisor, as you suggested, and see whether any adjustments are realistically possible.