Maarten:

I'm responding to your PC posts on June 3rd and June 4th. Your attitude of wanting to learn more seems commendable. I agree that it is one of life's learning moments. Most of us have a few of these awful but beneficial learning experiences. Unfortunately, a few of us don't learn and seem to live through a series of hot conflicts.

I'd guess that most of us have a few nightmarish experiences that set off alarms that tell us to "be careful" or "go cautiously" or "get the hell out of this situation." Those warning signals (anxious) serve us well. I understand that you may have been trying hard to avoid the mistakes of the previous project. One of the warning signs that we may need to pay particular attention is when we seem headed into a conflict with a person who has authority, strong opinions, uncompromising attitudes, etc. The professor from the Medical School showed some of these signs. I wonder why you weren't alerted to these problems? You said you saw he was 'pushy" and "gave orders." But you decided to disregarded his orders even though "you thought this might cause problems." If I were you, I would have been pretty anxious at this point, especially since the co-worker wasn't carrying his load.

Then the situation gets really bad...name calling "lazy," incompetent, threats of failure. And you got more angry, made some critical comment about the medical professor, and didn't speak for two weeks...and the fantasy of killing him.

It seems to me that you were worrying if you were being aggressive or assertive, as though it would be OK if you were just assertive. My view is that the animosity had gone way to far. Someone who can resolve the conflict should be called in to stop the project or stop the fighting. This person to resolve the disagreements could be the professor actually responsible for grading your project, the department chair, a Dean, an Ombudsman...

I don't see it as one of you being wrong and the other right. The medical professor was just as inappropriate as you were (I've just focused on your actions) and I think both of you should have stopped interacting much earlier. I can see how you were made to feel in charge of the research. The medical professor should have been told you were in charge and if he couldn't accept your ideas that the disagreements should have been settled in a specific manner.

The provision of an opportunity to do research as part of this class is commendable. However, with several big projects it just has to be expected that there will be intellectual and personality conflicts that need to be resolved quickly. Perhaps the graduate students could be told to report serious difficulties to the course professor who could then resolved these kinds of problems (or have a group who specialized in personality conflicts or in design/statistics problems). You could benefited from such a group, just as you got some help from this Forum.

Please raise any more concerns with us...and I would be especially interested in how your project was finished or if it was just stopped. Good luck. I'm betting that this experience will have a major influence on how you watch for and resolve conflicts in your life. What do you think?

drclay