Could it be any harder

Just got back with a night out avec Justine.

I would like to say that she has wised up, pulled her socks up and is happily trotting along towards whatever destination it is she has set her heart on. Okay, too much to expect. But you would forgive me if you thought she would be the same sweet, happy albeit guilelessly dappy girl she has always been. Right?

Guess again.

Our catch up was at this coffee shop/bar/restaurant in London. I go there occasionally and the place never really changes, full of trendy design students (okay, okay, cute hunky design students), cycle couriers and a few gay guys that have strayed too far from Soho. Justine has a new gig, a research assistant no less, under a lecturer in a well known university in central London. It is quite an impressive project she is working on by the sounds of things, and it looks like things are finally going her way.

Except she is completely miserable and looks like a ghost of her former self. Forget about the Andrex puppy affection she normally met me with, she could barely raise a smile when she saw me. We trade some gossip about who is doing what and how her family is before coming to the heart of the matter. Justine has had resounding bad luck on the clinical psychology application front this year. Fine, She is not the only one.

However, the two other RAs in her department seem to take delight in treating Justine as a whipping post for their frustrations. Although Justine is technically the junior most RA, the two others seem to spend half their time ripping her to shreds about her numerous shortcomings, leaving her out of the loop, and making her look bad in front of the project lead. Any enthusiasm Justine had for the job has now gone, her work is criticised on a daily basis and its an effort of will just to make it through the day.

I am quite scared about her state of mind at the moment. She looks like she has just been released from Abu Ghraib, and she was changing from the deeply hopeless ("I will never get anywhere will I?"), to the worrying ("I will keep applying [for clinical training] until I am 50"), to the morbid ("No one will ever know I existed, will they")*. I wasn't really sure what to do. It was like watching Les Dennis go to pieces talking to the chickens on Celebrity Big Brother. Only worse as it was a friend. I realise she can be seen as a target and I have documented, perhaps wrongly, many of her lesser moments*, but still she doesn't deserve this.

On the train back, I was almost shaking and crying with anger. How fucking dare those two publicly assassinate Justine! Its out and out bullying, and to someone who would never dream of fighting back. I just want to walk into their department and slap them both before taking them to a tribunal and getting them fired. Yeah, we all put up with politics, but this sort of thing surely is more like borstal than a university?

I will see her again in a few days to see how she is. Already suggested she goes to the counselling service. In the meantime, I have just got to do something.




*Obviously have changed what she has said, but kept the tone. I am not a total heartless bitch.