- #1
Mishra
- 53
- 1
I have recently been visiting a lab in the US as a visiting scholar and I am facing a tense social situation that spoils my ability to do decent work. The situation is so shameful that talking about it makes me feel like a child and feels humiliating...
Basically, an other student a little younger than me arrived at the same time as me in the lab. It happens that this student is from the same country as me, even though we did not knew each other. It turns out that this person does not like to speak English and bounded with me.
At first I found him a little annoying: cherry-picking ideas from me and then pretending it was his own when the prof was present, constantly interrupting me to talk about his facebook newsfeed or telling me how great his solution (which was usually mine) to simple problem was great etc. This was completely manageable and I didn't care too much about him "stealing" my ideas considering these were not important things and I was still happy to help. I worked with people like this before and I found that it was best to ignore them as much as possible and give them "their" answer as fast as possible to get rid of them.
However that person also has the habit of insulting people in our native language... He did this at numerous occasions, sometimes in front of the said people with extreme language thinking that no one would understand. These insults always came out of nowhere and for no good reasons. He would literally storm out of his office and insult someone from the lab who asked him to do a mandatory safety course...
On multiple occasions I gently told him to stop since some people could probably understand us. On some other occasions I simply ignored him or "tamed" him. As it turns out, I learned (by reading bios after a paranoid sleepless night) that some people at the lab DO speak our native language...
I don't care much for him, but this puts me in a terrible situation: I feel like I am being identified to this person which would make a lot of sense since he is constantly talking to me and avoids english as much as possible, and since we arrived approximately at the same time. I have entered this state of massive paranoia and I feel like people hate me... What began as a wonderful experience morphed into a living nightmare and I can't work nor socialize with people anymore.
I told him the situation, and he told me he would stop doing it. He realized how stupid his behavior was and told me he would stop (but he also came up with a lot a stupid plans to manipulate people and "make up" for it...). However this does not solve the problem: he hurt some of the group's members. I feel like I am assimilated to a bully by extension. It is also my mistake for having been to gentle with him, I should probably have told him to stop immediately, but I am not this kid father and it did not seemed appropriate at the time.
Talking to the prof would make me look like a kid snitching on a fellow student and would probably annoy him to death, apologizing to the lab would definitely ruin both of our relationship with everybody, not doing anything haunts me... Never have I been in this sorts of situation and I would very much like to have some help and advises from people who encountered this problem...
Thank you for reading, best
Basically, an other student a little younger than me arrived at the same time as me in the lab. It happens that this student is from the same country as me, even though we did not knew each other. It turns out that this person does not like to speak English and bounded with me.
At first I found him a little annoying: cherry-picking ideas from me and then pretending it was his own when the prof was present, constantly interrupting me to talk about his facebook newsfeed or telling me how great his solution (which was usually mine) to simple problem was great etc. This was completely manageable and I didn't care too much about him "stealing" my ideas considering these were not important things and I was still happy to help. I worked with people like this before and I found that it was best to ignore them as much as possible and give them "their" answer as fast as possible to get rid of them.
However that person also has the habit of insulting people in our native language... He did this at numerous occasions, sometimes in front of the said people with extreme language thinking that no one would understand. These insults always came out of nowhere and for no good reasons. He would literally storm out of his office and insult someone from the lab who asked him to do a mandatory safety course...
On multiple occasions I gently told him to stop since some people could probably understand us. On some other occasions I simply ignored him or "tamed" him. As it turns out, I learned (by reading bios after a paranoid sleepless night) that some people at the lab DO speak our native language...
I don't care much for him, but this puts me in a terrible situation: I feel like I am being identified to this person which would make a lot of sense since he is constantly talking to me and avoids english as much as possible, and since we arrived approximately at the same time. I have entered this state of massive paranoia and I feel like people hate me... What began as a wonderful experience morphed into a living nightmare and I can't work nor socialize with people anymore.
I told him the situation, and he told me he would stop doing it. He realized how stupid his behavior was and told me he would stop (but he also came up with a lot a stupid plans to manipulate people and "make up" for it...). However this does not solve the problem: he hurt some of the group's members. I feel like I am assimilated to a bully by extension. It is also my mistake for having been to gentle with him, I should probably have told him to stop immediately, but I am not this kid father and it did not seemed appropriate at the time.
Talking to the prof would make me look like a kid snitching on a fellow student and would probably annoy him to death, apologizing to the lab would definitely ruin both of our relationship with everybody, not doing anything haunts me... Never have I been in this sorts of situation and I would very much like to have some help and advises from people who encountered this problem...
Thank you for reading, best
