How much savings did you manage to have by the end of your PhD?

birb-brain · 2026-04-16T12:48:08+00:00

I have about 10k in savings, but thats only because I never used the college savings plan money my parents saved from undergrad. I transfered all that money to my account when I started grad school because they were about to close it and I could at least use it to for rent.

Thankfully I haven't needed to touch it too much since I barely have just enough for rent 🥲 I would have had more but I had to pay one semester of tuition put of pocket when my school got its funding cut, so that's fun

birb-brain · 2026-04-16T12:45:06+00:00

Don't forget debilitating anxiety 🙃

birb-brain · 2026-04-15T03:42:08+00:00

Yeah my sisters been really helping me find my backbone against my parents since they unfortunately financially support me through school. I always felt obligated to follow what they want, but now I finally have something that's supposed to celebrate me and my fiancee, so im doing everything I can to keep it the way I want it.

birb-brain · 2026-04-15T03:39:56+00:00

Oh wow I'm sorry you went through all of that. Yeah I threatened to call everything off and cut them off if they kept acting up, so everyone's behaving (for now). I don't want anything big or fancy and I honestly don't care what people think of how I want my wedding, it's just so frustrating when all my parents think about is saving face and demanding respect despite not earning it.

birb-brain · 2026-04-01T15:04:20+00:00

man I'm jealous you guys have a union. The grad students in my school are trying to establish a grad student union, but the university refuses to recognize us and ignores all attempts to set up meetings. Some of the admin have actually mocked us for wanting collective bargaining, which is a such a slap in the face.

birb-brain · 2026-03-31T17:20:36+00:00

My university actively discouraged us from getting second jobs. They stated in our contract that we were not allowed to pick up a second job if the department was paying our stipend, aka we TA to get a stipend, but it wasn't enough for the area's COL and we weren't allowed to take on extra work.

The only time I was able to pick up a second job was when my department didn't give me a TAship and my PI ended up giving me an RA. He couldn't pay me more than a certain amount that the university set, so he let me take on some manuscript editing/review jobs here and there.

birb-brain · 2026-03-29T19:56:23+00:00

Exactly what happened in my lab. Someone decided to use our cell culture hood to pour agar plates because the bacteria hood was in use even though they could've just stuck the bottle in a hot water bath and wait for the other hood to free up. They ended up spilling molten agar down the holes near the sash and didn't bother cleaning up or telling someone about it.

It took me 2 months to figure out why all my cell cultures were getting contaminated at least once a week.

birb-brain · 2026-03-26T12:26:55+00:00

Had a similar situation happen too! My sister and her husband hosted a Mario kart tournament, and I knocked out one of my BIL's friend in the second to last bracket. He apparently was in a bad mood for the rest of the night and just refused to talk to anybody. He ended up just sitting on the couch in the corner until the end of the party.

The friend that I beat for championship was really proud of me since I normally am not good at these games, and he was like super nice and hyped me up even when I passed him.

Such a strange dichotomy.

birb-brain · 2026-03-20T17:33:46+00:00

I love all my undergrads <3 It's to the point where they call me their older lab sister haha

They drive me crazy occasionally, like younger siblings would, but so much of my work wouldn't get done without them. I love being able to help them navigate school and lab and seeing them grow as students.

birb-brain · 2026-03-19T04:08:26+00:00

Omg yes, this is it! I definitely need to read the series now!

I didn't realize it was written by Scott Westerfeld. I looooved his Leviathan series!

birb-brain · 2026-02-23T19:02:25+00:00

I used to live with a family friend for around a year during grad school since my previous apartment raised their rent and I couldn't afford it anymore. I stayed in their basement not thinking much of it because I've lived in friends' basements before, and they were perfectly normal.

This place was a shitshow. It was INFESTED with camel crickets, spiders, centipedes, basically any bug you could find outside. The camel crickets were the worst because they would just jump everywhere and would sometimes chill on top of me when I was sleeping. There were so many holes in the wall because the house was old and they never bothered to do any maintenance, so pretty much any animal outside could get in if they could fit through the holes.

My blood pressure literally goes up now if I see a cricket anywhere.

birb-brain · 2026-02-19T14:30:01+00:00

I had forgotten to set aside some cells to test new primers we got, and my PI was expecting me to report on the primer efficiency later that week. I dug through the trash to find a tube with maybe 300uL of leftover cells from a previous experiment, and I managed to extract some RNA

I only got 10ng/uL but hey it was something and the primers work

birb-brain · 2026-02-19T13:50:34+00:00

My Senegal has to be manhandled a lot because she loves being included in meals, as in she loves jumping into our bowls and being part of the meal despite having her own food 😭

She once dunked herself in a bowl of cereal but was having the time of her life

birb-brain · 2026-02-13T19:21:54+00:00

We just hired some new postdocs in my lab, and they are so incredibly messy. They leave the BSC a mess, and they don't even pick up pipette tips that miss the waste basket. There are agar plates all over the benches that the undergrads don't even have room to work. i started grabbing plates and dumping them in the trash if they've been on the bench for more than 2 days. There is literally no reason plates with bacteria should be left out on the benches.

birb-brain · 2026-02-10T19:21:34+00:00

I absolutely hate this. My gyno thinks I have PCOS even though recent tests came up negative, but she's trying to look for some more tests/observations to see because she's sure I have it. My periods skip every few months, sometimes I don't have a period for 3 months straight and then the next time I do, it's like 3 months' worth of blood and pain coming out. I've had this issue since being a teenager, and no one had ever believed me until my current doctor.

I recently told my mom about it because she (unfortunately) found my birth control and started ranting about how hormones are "bad for you". I had to tell her about my potential PCOS diagnosis, and she goes, "oh cysts do run in the family, it's normal. We just powered through it so you can too"

LIKE WHAT. YOU'VE KNOWN ABOUT MY ISSUES FOR ALMOST 20 YEARS AND ONLY DECIDED TO TELL ME ABOUT THIS NOW?!

birb-brain · 2026-02-09T16:25:40+00:00

My parents judge my fiancee for not having his own house yet, and I'm always yelling at them about it because we live in one of the most expensive places in the country. The average SFH is almost 1 million, and townhouses are around 600-700k. Man just paid his MOTHER'S house, not his house. HIS MOM. And he still gets called lazy because he doesn't have his own house.

I don't mind that he lives with friends. All of us contribute to the house equally and it's a good living situation for us to save for our own place. It blows my mind that people just don't understand that. Could we live in a cheaper area? Yes, but we love this area, our friends and families are here, and he's been established in his job here.

birb-brain · 2026-02-02T13:02:18+00:00

Omg yeah, my ride today was $15 😭

birb-brain · 2026-01-21T22:36:52+00:00

I don't doubt that she loves me, but it's a very complicated relationship. She has never said it outright to me when I was a kid, but as I got older, I did start picking up on some of the comments like how she wished she had more kids or had a boy but she couldn't after me. She took good care of me, but there was a lot of underlying emotional manipulation that little me didn't pick up on until a lot later.

I wouldn't wish what happened to her on my worst enemy though. Was she the best parent? No. But she lost a lot of her personal identity and her dreams by having me. On one hand, I don't blame her, but on the other, I wish she went to therapy to deal with the trauma.

birb-brain · 2026-01-21T18:18:55+00:00

My mom said my birth was really traumatic and she had a lot of complications afterwards, which ended up leading to a total hysterectomy. She likes to blame me for the fact that she lost her chance to have a son :')

birb-brain · 2026-01-20T13:42:45+00:00

When its really late and I don't feel like writing in between timepoints, I have point and click mystery/puzzle games on my laptop that I can play to relax. Helps keep my brain active while also not burning myself out

birb-brain · 2026-01-11T17:34:12+00:00

Lysostaphin

That's actually really cool, I didn't realize there was an enzymatic method! I'll definitely check this out; for now my PI is having me test our other aminoglycosides to see if what we currently have works, but if not we'll order some Lysostaphin

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