What do you do if your job ends up being something not advertised?

[fartprincess]

So I applied & got an offer for a summer fellowship working on a hard clam restoration project. I'm a student and applied to this position specifically because I am interested in learning more about shellfish. My boss, who runs a lab at Rutgers, doesn't have to pay me - I am funded by the NSF which supplies my stipend, she actually gets a stipend too to cover costs to train me, and any materials I use, etc.

Anyway, 3 weeks into my fellowship she changed the entire scope of my project - she had me start a project identifying plankton in water samples her lab had collected for a previous project (which was unrelated to plankton), because she didn't have time anymore to teach me how to use some machinery in the lab that was critical to my original purpose in her lab.

Her expertise is not in plankton and she hasn't been able to help much when I've had plankton-specific questions. She is standoff-ish so I don't know for sure the motives of her switching my project, but it is possible she is just giving me busy work to keep me out of her way. Also, I wouldn't have applied for this position if I had known it would have been about plankton, because I work in a "real" plankton lab back at my home institution, and there people can actually help me with plankton stuff. But I wanted to learn about bivalves anyway so I really wish I had applied to more bivalve-related jobs. Whatever

So as a whole, this has been a pretty bad experience for a lot of reasons. I already reached out to the director of this fellowship at Rutgers who is meeting with me next week to discuss, and I am also considering making a stink to the NSF, because they really shouldn't have funded her for my position because she expended minimal time and resources for my project.

My question is, I guess, how effed up is it to apply for a job (whether it is a job-job, fellowship, internship, grad-school position, whatever) and have it COMPLETELY change a couple weeks in? Obviously it varies a lot depending on the reasons why it changed, but in general, how shitty is this? Am I over-reacting? Is this just part of life? I've been getting increasingly upset over this and want to know if I need to calm down

[Sci_Girl]

I'm not sure I have ever had a job that follow exactly, 100%, to a T what the initial job description was. Especially when right at the end of the description it says "other duties as needed/necessary". That is the real sucky part of the jobs we really like based on the description, I do wish jobs were required to actually stick to what they say they will.

[Madeleine]

It's common, unfortunately, but that doesn't make it right. A lot of people in manager/boss positions are willing to take advantage of their employers because they think they can get away with it. I would suggest you speak to people who have done the job before, before you accept any offers to get a realistic idea of what the job will be like in the future. Interviewers are always going to say what they think you want to hear.

P.I's especially are very busy so it is likely she is just giving you busy work to keep out of her way. Honestly a lot of people applying to internships like yours are just looking for a resume boost and aren't looking to learn anything, so she figured you wouldn't care.

This situation is part of life, but it's also extremely shitty. If it were a job I'm taking to make some pocket money and won't get me anywhere in the future, I'd just quit. If it were a job I needed to pay bills, I'd get another job and then quit. However you need to consider that the job you're talking about right now is something that would help you in the future, regardless of whether or not you're learning anything. By that I mean resume-padding, job referrals/recommendations, etc. So by going after her, you lose both of those benefits (on top of not learning anything this summer) - that doesn't mean you can't go after her, it means you'll need to do something in the future to make up for this job. Last thing is, even if you go to the NSF, I doubt anything would happen to her more severe than a slap on the wrist (i.e getting a warning, giving back the funding), and she could talk shit about you to other labs and make it harder for you to get a position next summer.