I Got Fired From My Dream Job
By: Sarah Myers
Tags: Work, Entrepreneurship, Academia, Science, Self Improvement

I Got Fired From My Dream Job

I thought it would be the end of me. It wasn’t.

Image by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

It was December 2017, and I had just graduated college with a Bachelor’s in Psychology. My goal was to find a research assistant position at a prestigious research university.

Five months of job searching happened… and I got it.

My “Dream” Job

I ended up beating all the applicants who did their undergrad from the very same institution to work at a top 20 national university and world renowned research institution as a research technician in a psychology and neuroscience laboratory. I couldn’t have been more enthralled. I had worked so hard to get to this point, switching between four different schools before doing two empirical research projects and volunteering in a psychology laboratory for two years so that I could build this experience to prepare me for graduate school. In the academic industry, it is standard for students to work that hard during their undergrad degree so they can a) apply straight to graduate school or b) get a position like I had found.

It was my first “Big Girl” job right out of college. I had a salary (even though my wage was below the poverty line), and I worked around 40 hours a week. I was running fMRI scans, analyzing the data, recruiting people for our lab’s study, and working on my own research. I was set to work there for two years before applying to graduate school.

But then, things started to go south.

You see, I have two disabilities, specifically in mental illness. I didn’t tell anyone at work what those illnesses were, but on my job application under the disabilities inquiry, I did mark “Yes, I have a disability”.

I remembered this disabilities tab when I began having triggers. At work, I was starting to get panic attacks in certain environments. I would be working with two or three other people, and my mind would get so frantic I wouldn’t even be able to concentrate. I was working with real people with real expensive technology, so I was concerned about the safety of the participants as well as us. I thought of my rights as a person with a disability, so I wanted to communicate my experience to others.

I told my coworker. She expressed so much empathy. She encouraged me to keep telling.

I told my other coworker. He was not as empathetic, but both of them encouraged me to tell our principal investigator, which is the PhD expert that runs the lab, and in that type of work setting, that is also the boss.

So I told him. The first thing he asked was, “Do you think you need to take a break from working to figure this stuff out?” He went on. “I just worry that this will continue getting worse. It’s not a bad thing to leave a job. I won’t hold it against you. I will fill the position if you leave but would be happy to recommend you to another position if you feel better at some point.” I realized what he was doing. He was trying to talk me out of my job.

I refused. I said, “No, no. I was just wondering if I could get some kind of accommodation, because this is disability related.” I told him what I might potentially need, to hopefully have an open conversation about how best to help me. He then refused. “I cannot accommodate that… We will have to see how things work out. Thanks for telling me.” I was dismissed from his office.

My mistakes from then on out were watched with an eagle’s eye. After that incident, I was late to a meeting, and then I had trouble implementing a computer programming script onto my computer. I required help, and that, I assumed, was what a normal new person would need. It was my first job and I was still getting used to the structure and roles. It was also a really substantial job, full of heavy responsibilities. I thought I was proud of myself, despite my mistakes here and there. Mistakes are normal when first starting out, right?

That was the last I heard of that for a few weeks. Then one day, the lab manager marched into my office space within earshot of three other people and started yelling at me in front of everyone! I had made the mistake of bypassing her to contact the higher-ups in the hierarchy of the research division where participants get paid. She had originally told me that it was wrong to directly contact the higher ups. At my alma mater, I was always able to have open communication with everyone from any level of the employee chain, so this was definitely a culture difference. I guess I just wasn’t used to working at a multi million dollar research institution with several departments handling things my smaller university would have fewer people with smaller titles to handle.

Anyways, I misunderstood what she was saying, and I CCd her on an email to the higher up so that she would be included in the conversation. Apparently that is what set her off. She berated me in front of my coworkers. “You do NOT contact that person! I have told you once and you have disobeyed me! This is NOT okay. Your P.I. will be hearing about this!” I was so shook and nervous.

I sent both my P.I. and my lab manager an email asking them if they had any issues with me, if they could please do so in private. When I was late to the previous aforementioned meeting, the P.I. said out loud how disappointed he was with me and told me that I had to work hard to earn his trust in front of the other two employees. After I was late to the meeting, he wrote me an email saying he thought I was late because I didn’t want to pick up any more responsibilities and that I was shying from my duties in the lab. How wrong he was! I was completely ecstatic to be receiving more responsibility as time went on. This was my dream job, after all! I was eager to impress. But unfortunately, that didn’t seem to happen.

After I sent the email to my lab manager and my P.I., two days later I was called into the office. When I went in, both my P.I. and my lab manager were sitting in the room also with a “witness” from administration. I sat down with my notebook and pen, thinking this was going to be a regular check-in.

My P.I. handed me a piece of paper. “I’m sorry to tell you that I’m terminating you from this position.” My heart sunk. “I just don’t think you will get up to speed with the requirements of this position in the six month probation period.”

I nearly cried, but I didn’t. I thanked him and told him I was grateful to work in his lab. I asked him for feedback. What could I have done differently? What specifically did I do wrong? What kind of job would be better suited for me? He ignored the first two questions and said, “I think a job with less responsibility would be best.”

I left that day and was escorted out of the office by the head scientist. “No one was even expecting this was going to happen,” she told me. “Everyone is in shock.” I knew in my heart that this was unfair.

But somehow I didn’t internalize it that way. After that, I thought I was the worst employee in the world. I thought I had failed neuroscience as my career. I thought neuroscience wasn’t for me. I thought it was truly all my fault, that I did in fact do everything wrong and that I was just a terrible employee. Maybe the 9–5 life wasn’t for me, I thought. Maybe my illnesses are truly a hindrance to me functioning in the real world. Maybe the stereotypes are true — people with mental illness really cannot function in the working world, and it truly is all our fault.

New Job Search

I ended up being depressed for four months while trying to find a new job in a different lab at the same university, but the university policy was that if you were terminated you had to work elsewhere for a year to get “good employment” status before applying there again. I wanted to stay in my hometown because I was still dealing with psychological issues and wanted the support of my family, but this was the only research institution that hired research assistants as a full time job in my hometown. So I spent the next two years working different full time jobs in other industries: working as a conflicts analyst at a top law firm before I quit the 9–5 desk life and working as a community manager for a creative technology start-up that was a little more fast paced and nontraditional, but quit that too because of a toxic boss.

Today, I am in graduate school. I am earning my Master’s in behavioral neuroscience. Getting fired from a neuroscience job apparently didn’t stop me from continuing down my professional road within the field.

I learned so much by working those other jobs — how a real company with an HR department is supposed to work, how to talk to your bosses about your disability (or how to bypass them and go directly to HR), experienced different company cultures (a big corporation compared to a small start-up), and tried out different fields before realizing that it was neuroscience that I wanted to commit to.

I wouldn’t have gotten those other opportunities if I hadn’t gotten fired. Was I the perfect employee? No, but I believed that I was doing my best and could have received better training and accommodation. I spent months in a mode of self blame before realizing that this was entirely a gaslighting experience that unfortunately had high stakes professional ramifications.

I know this will not be the end of me. I will still make it as a neuroscience professional, no matter how many hurdles come my way. I hope that if you ever find yourself terminated from a position, you too can separate out the realities of your own responsibilities and capabilities as an employee with the expectations and culture of your work environment. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out, and that’s okay. It will not be the end of you.