I called my momma and she asked if I could talk about it without naming names....that's pretty impossible. There are a total of 15 students in my dept and about 5 of them are brand new. The people I'm upset about are pretty obvious when I start saying specific things.....

I am just going at it as "how can I deal with office politics?" I know that there are political reasons for everything that is going on and I HATE that kind of stuff. I know, for a fact, that the kid who got this scholarship is a flat out bad student/scientist and that I run circles around him when it comes to community service and volunteer work (which is what the scholarship is SUPPOSED to be about). I know that the only reason this other kid is still here is to push through another student and get graduation rates up. To me that is total B-S.

I just want to know what I'm getting myself into. If THIS is academia. I will quit now and get a damn job. I'm not staying in the academic setting if this is the stuff that happens. I'd rather go and work in industry where someone just tells me what to do rather than this bull. I do not feel at home here at all. I'm so sick of this crap.