An Incident

When I was an undergraduate in college, I decided at some point that I wanted to go on to graduate school; I therefore resolved to take the classes that would get me there. Among these was an undergraduate research class in biochemistry. This class was to be done by oneself under the direction of a professor. That is how I found myself working in a biochem lab.

I felt enormously privileged to be there, for aside from one other undergraduate, there was my prof, his paid assistant, and four graduate students. I felt I was part of an inner circle, not to be confused with other students who were confined to classrooms.

We were all friendly in that lab, and the prof was youngish and hip. At the time, I lived about 100 miles from my hometown. I was lonely, and my father was pretty inattentive to me, something which later in my life I came to see as the normal order of things, but which at the time I was struggling with. My professor came to be a kind of father figure to me, or at any rate as an older friend and guide. I'm sure he didn't look at it that way: I was just another student, most likely. But we (the prof, other students, and I) as I said, were friendly, and on occasion would go to a bar or pizza place after work/school on Friday evenings.

I didn't perform very well in my research; left to my own devices, I loafed a lot, and my research project went nowhere.

One weekend, my professor decided to have dinner for all of us at his house. I arrived that evening with my girlfriend, who happened to be the other undergrad in the lab. She drove, as I didn't own a car at the time. After we had finished eating, we were all sitting around the table talking, and by that time we were all fairly drunk.

Somehow, our research came up, and out of the blue, in front of everyone, my professor said something to the effect that I hadn't been working very hard on my project, and then: "That's why I don't ever want Dennis to work in my lab again."

He turned to me and said, "Do you understand?"
Me: "I hear you."
Professor: "Yes, but do you understand?"
Me: "I hear you." It was the only thing I could think of to avoid utter humiliation.

With that, and with everyone still sitting at the table, I got up and walked straight out the front door, emotionally devastated. Since I didn't have a car, I started walking in the general direction of my house, still fairly intoxicated. I must have walked for ten minutes or so when a car pulled up with my girlfriend and one of the grad students inside. I got in the car, and immediately broke down in tears. They took me home, and came inside with me, and I must have cried continuously for an hour. I felt like I had been disowned.

The next day, the professor phoned to apologize. I assented to his words, but inside I knew: in vino veritas. He had meant what he said the night before, and there was no going back on it. I felt not only a failure, but also betrayed.

With that incident, I felt that I had learned something important about the world: if you trust people, you are a fool. I don't know to what extent I've got past that viewpoint. I do think that it has colored every personal relationship I've had since.