Wednesday, September 02, 2015

Slightly Creepy

Someone who was a postdoc when I was a grad student - he's 40 now - just married a grad student.  So she's 28, maybe 29.

At least she wasn't one of his grad students.  No, she was in the next lab over....

(I don't think an 11 year age difference is inherently creepy.  I do think it's a little creepy to marry a grad student in your own department when you're a tenured professor.  Though I suppose it's a little career-suicidal to marry one when you're an untenured professor!  I am agnostic on the relative creepiness of merely dating them.)

4 comments:

  1. Dating people at work is just so convenient! I mean, they're right there... I really can't judge, I was Patrick's Organic Chemistry Lab TA. He was only a year behind me, and I didn't have any actual power over him. My school was small enough that the profs graded the lab reports.

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    1. Jenny F Scientist10:18 PM

      Not creepy because you were both students! At the same level! This is somewhere past that, for reals. However I still wish them many happy years together.

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  2. I agree, you have to find a spouse somewhere (I also once TAed in a course my now husband took), but that's indeed something different.

    My husbands Ph.D. advisor had a second spring time of his life, shortly after he became institute director, left his wife and 3 (or 4, don't remember) children and shortly after started dating a Ph.D. student in his institute (not from his lab, but he was the boss of her boss, if only administratively, and could have had some influence on the proceedings of her dissertation). *Yikes* I am ever so happy that this happened after my husbands time there, because *yikes* (in the meantime they have a child and are married and she is a PostDoc in his lab ("on maternity leave"))
    But then - I am aware of more examples, so I guess it happens all the time...

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    Replies
    1. Aaaaargh. That is ALSO creepy and probably kind of skeezy. At least this dude was single/ never married.

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