Meanwhile at WVU

There is one anecdote about WVU that I haven’t yet shared: In Chapter 8 I wrote about my trip to California on a Triumph Bonneville, but I didn’t explain what happened back home in my absence.

Although I timed that trip to coincide with spring break, graduate students don’t get spring break off (or vacation of any kind, for that matter). True, there are no classes, but that doesn’t mean the university is closed or the labs are inaccessible. We were still expected to continue our work (or actually accelerate our pace given that we weren’t going to class that week). Nonetheless, I decided to take the week off.

I did not have a particularly amiable relationship with my advisor and chose not to tell him I was leaving town. I just figured I’d do whatever damage control was necessary when I got back.

My roommate and my friends/lab mates joked that they were going to tell my advisor that I really was there and if he was looking for me, they’d say “he was just here a minute ago, you just missed him” or “I think he’s at [a location that you are not]”.

I thought they were just pulling my leg, but when I got back, my roommate told me they HAD actually lied to my advisor all week and he really DIDN’T know I’d been gone.

I’m still not 100% sure they really did this, but I never mentioned it to my advisor and he gave no indication that he knew I’d been gone, so I left well enough alone.